Road Trip
by Fuzzy Necromancer
Summary: Teen Titans take an interstellar road trip to starfire's homeworld for a holiday. Much hilarity ensues. Posted with several chapters yet to come. Contains Lovecraft and MST3K allusions, some vore and expansion, and disturbing Tamaranian fertility rites.
1. Chapter 1

As the timer neared zero, Beast Boy broke into a run. How could he have forgotten? Was he too late already?  
Ten Seconds.  
He got down on all fours, struggling to change shape without wasting precious seconds on turning or changing position.  
Nine Seconds.  
With no time for thought, he began instinctively shifting. Dark splotches appeared on his skin.  
Eight Seconds.  
His legs and arms elongated. His head narrowed as his ears moved back.  
Seven Seconds.  
His fingers pulled together and retracted while his nails lengthened into wicked claws.  
Six Seconds.  
As he bounded forward in full cheetah morph, the device began to release a plume of anticipatory smoke.  
Five.  
Four.  
Three.  
Two.  
One.  
Just as the clock reached zero, Beast Boy slammed the off button with his paw. He lay there panting for a few minutes before resuming human form. _Lucky I got here in time. My veggie burgers almost burned!_

As Beast Boy sunk his teeth into the heavily seasoned patty, he detected an odd flavor. "Huh, these taste kind of weird. Their a little thicker, richer, and chewier, almost...almost..."  
"Meaty?" Cyborg offered with a cruel smile.  
"Yeah, kind of like BWA!" His eyes shrunk as he realized he was ingesting the remains of a fellow living creature. He hurled the burger away in terror in disgust like a slowly waking viper that you had mistook for a twig. He spat it out in a cone of semi-chewed burger parts, then bolted for his room.

With a sense of near life-or-death urgency, he fumbled through his collection of books. National Geographic, Playboy, Playvegan, Guinness book of world records 2002, Big Fat Babes, and AHA! He kissed the book he now held briefly before turning to page 23 in "The Children's Book of Rainy Day Ipecacs", which featured lucky charms with cough syrup. He quickly dashed into the kitchen, Cyborg still chuckling to himself, grabbed the ingredients, mixing them together fast enough to create a motion blur, and then dashed off to the bathroom, where he quickly woofed the Ipecac down, closed the door, and began to violently retch.

After wiping his mouth, catching his breath, and gargling salt water, Beast Boy came back in and yelled at Cyborg, "DUDE, WHAT THE FRELL DID YOU DO?!"  
"Just returning the favor. Remember last week, you switched my steak with a tofu-griller?"  
"THAT WAS DIFFERENT!" Beast Boy screamed chibifying and sprouting a head-vein. "YOU don't eat tofu because you don't like how it tastes. I don't eat meat because I think it's EVIL!" Little trails of steam where curling out his ears. "I mean, how would YOU like it if I put parts of a HUMAN CORPSE in your food!"  
Their little discourse was interrupted by a loud alarm that meant security had been breached. Beast Boy gave Cyborg a "This isn't over," glare and rushed off to take care of it.

Cyborg, Beast Boy, Raven, Terra, and Robin rushed to the scene and recoiled with horror. There before them stood a blasphemous..._thing_. It's body was a dark reddish purple. It slug-like main form was barely supported by six muscular tentacles. It's back had a pair of long feathery tentacles and two four-jointed chitinous members ending in putty-like globs. The globs seemed to secrete some kind of adhesive and shape and twist to fit a given task, and right now both were committed to holding a cruel, serrated, wickedly twisted blade. It had a vertically slit mouth, it's twisted parody of a face opening sideways with a pair of green, vacant, almond-shaped eyes on each half as it gurgled out its hideous speech, pausing and gasping for breath as its alien vocal cords were heavily taxed by warping and twisting to fit the tongue of earth men.

"_I...haaaave...come...fooor the...oooonne...yooouuuu...caallll...Starrrfierrr..._"

"What are you doing here?!" Robin asked, despite the fact that it had already given him an answer.

"_I...commme...tooooo...givvv...hurrr...thiissssthfsk!_" it said, indicating the blade by decapitating a stray air molecule. It's voice seemed to be choked off by a primal, hideous, predatory hiss.

Robin glared at this hideous abomination that _dared_ to threaten Starfire, what kind of primal, sadistic, unholy savage would even _think_ of using such a weapon? The time for talk was over.

"Titans, GO!"

The creature's eyes throbbed with alarm as staff-wielding teenager on a green rhinoceros came clambering towards. It made a weak gurgling noise as it was rammed into the wall. Raven telekinetically grabbed and hoisted it into the air, where it was incapable of evading Cyborg's sonic blast. As it fell to the ground, Robin rushed it, grabbed the antennae, and gave them a strong pull.

That was a mistake.

The creature let loose a scream that the didn't hear so much as feel and see in the resulting heat shimmer. The searing vibration felt like they were being zapped with 4000 volts while every bone in their body was being microwaved. They all stopped and clawed furiously at their skin, trying to do anything to end the sensation. After the scream ending, the creature coughed up some of a the sea-green fluid that it was already profusely spewing from its wounds. The Titans angrily got to their feet again. This time their would be no mercy. Robin readied a pyroclastic batarang, Cyborg charged up his cannon to full power, Raven chanted 12 times in succession with her full four eyes glaring, and Beast Boy started to gain momentum for a Tyrannosaurus charge.

Just as Starfire flew in and saw the scene, she screamed "NOOO!"

Starfire rushed to the vermillion creature. "Are you in need of medical care?" she said, and then repeated the phrase in several other languages.

A stunned Beast Boy resumed human form and asked "Wait, so this _isn't_ some evil alien nemesis?"

Starfire briefly ignored Beast Boy, listening attentively to the creature's whimpering gurgles, and then tore off part of her already short skirt and used it as some kind of tourniquet.(1) As Robin blushed and choked back a small whimper of horniness, he turned to the creature. "Um, sorry about that, it's just...I saw you swinging the weapon, and I thought you meant..."

Raven jumped in "We mistook you for an assassin. I should be able to repair any physical or psychological damage we accidentally inflicted on you. We all apologize for this terrible error." She then somehow managed to give Beast Boy, Terra, and Cyborg an elbow in the side at the same time(2), causing them to apologize in turn.

Beast Boy then rephrased his query "So, if he's not an assassin, what is he?"

"He is what you would call a 'Delivery Boy.' He came to bring me this ritualistic kranaku, an ancient Tamaranian weapon. It means that it is time to begin the pilgrimage to Tamaran's sister planet for the Cthgha-Niggurathian Festival, the most important holy day of my people. I must go, or risk expulsion from the twin sacred orders of Tamaran. You probably have no interest in doing so, but you may come if you wish."

"Dude, do you know what this means?" Beast Boy asked rhetorically. "INTERSTELLAR ROAD TRIP!"(3)

* * *

(1)She learned this technique from an action movie where the lead character was played by an actor whose chest size in inches was higher than her IQ.  
(2)She had actually used up both elbows on Cyborg and Beast Boy and jabbed Terra with a tentacle.  
(3)Yes, we have a title!

* * *

"Oh how glorious!" Starfire squealed in excitement. "Thank you Beast Boy! I will be very happy to have you and my other friends accompany me on this most sacred of holidays!" She proceeded to give him a spine-mulching hug that made Terra wince as she was reminded of her introduction to Starfire. "Alright then," Robin said, "I guess we better start getting ready. Oh and Beast Boy, clean your room before you leave, I don't want to come home to a complete mess." 

Beast Boy got to packing his possessions. Various comic book issues new and old, a copy of National Geographic, and another publication carefully concealed inside a copy of Snail Man, Issue 2. He stored away a good supply of tofu and soy-bean plants breed specifically for growth in space, and a few stuffed animals and toys he would rather not admit he still possessed and treasured. He then got to work tidying up his room, by killing the molds invading various sections with several doses of starfish digestive acid and cobra venom, then shoving all his junk in the closet. He then set out a food dish labeled with the name "Silkie" of mixed wheat products, fabric, and mulch.  
"Oh, and Beast Boy," Robin called from the hallway, "you better not shove everything in the closet like you did last time." Beast Boy swore under his breath and began cleaning up in earnest.

Raven searched through her belongings. She had already sorted out the majority in terms of standard clothing, tea bags, granola, candy bars, and goth pocky as snacks, and War and Peace, Eragon, the entire Dragonriders of Pern series and the full Lord of the Rings cycle including The Hobbit and The Silmarilion as light reading. Now it was just a question of which spellbooks to bring. She decided on the book of Azerion, the Recneps chronicles, and a blank spellbooks, since who knows, maybe she might run into some forgotten tablets or other source of spellcraft on her journey through the galaxy.

Cyborg had most of what he needed stored on an Ipod, aside from some beef jerky and emergency power packs (plus a portable charger) he was good to go.

Robin had made a careful selection of freeze dried pizza and ice cream, space suits, instant water (a kind of powdered hydrogen that bonded with oxygen when exposed to air), compressed oxygen, some books, a video game, and his normal utility belt array plus some new weapons designed specifically for space. He also brought along several test tubes and sampling equipment, so that he could take new substances with beneficial properties (and pass along the commercial rights to said substances to Wayne Industries).

Terra wasn't sure if her powers would work on other planets, so she mostly brought along several large rocks and compressed dirt, as well as twelve times her weight in food for the trip.

Starfire had planned ahead, and she took a vacuum-sealed box of items all prepared for this annual pilgrimage.

The Titans then piled into the recently expanded space ship/mobile base.

Starfire was literally bouncing of the walls with excitement. "Oh, just the thought of going for the Nigguroth-Cthugan festival erects my mind with childhood memories. The intoxicating smell of freshly baked grindle-cakes, fried guesterkurgan, and sauteed shuggoth; the glorious display of aeropyrotics(3), the exploding skyspells, the dance of the fire vampires, the gushing orange blood and death screams of a behir being sacrificed..."  
She continued to reminisce, not really aware of how increasingly disturbed her team-mates where getting, in fact seeming entirely oblivious to presence as the PG13 images of tameranian worship rites danced around her head, gazing with unseeing, big sparkly eyes of joy.  
"Riiiight," Beast Boy said uneasily. "How pleasant," Raven said with only a mild tinge of sarcasm. "It's almost as fun and cheerful as going into a dimly lit building to chant in a dead language and ritualistically feed on the blood and flesh of the innocent(4)" Robin tried to act enthusiastic and interested with great strain, although a careful observer could actually see his brain look around and slowly back away before informing him that he was on his own and breaking into a run. Cyborg was too busy focusing on navigating the ship out of earth's orbit.

* * *

(1)The last time Beast Boy had left Silkie without food, the Titans had returned home to find half the toilet missing.  
(2)Which amounted to a total of 960 pounds and which she would consume in 2.6 minutes.

(3) A tameranian art form that combined elements of starbolts, pyrotechnics, interprative dance, and mixed herbs

(4) 20 gold to anyone who can guess what real-life religious sect Raven is referring to

* * *


	2. Chapter 2

_Are we there yet?"_ Beast Boy whined 15 minutes into the trip.  
"**No**, we **aren't** there yet, now stop asking that!" Cyborg growled through gritted teeth.  
"I'm hungry," Terra moaned.   
"You just ate five miutes ago!" Robin rebuked ruthelessly.  
"That was just a snack," Terra defended.   
"You call four fried chickens and a coke a SNACK?!" he yelled back at her as she sheepishly retreated into her seat.   
"Azerath Metrion Zynthos, Azerath Metrion Zynthos, Azerath Metrion Zynth-ow!" Raven discharged a spark of magical energy as a blow to the side shattered her concentration. She turned to glare accusingly at Beast Boy. "Stop it," she coldly ordered.   
"Stop what?" Beast Boy asked, feigning innocence.   
"Stop **this**!" she responded, driving a jab hard into his stomach. Beast Boy Winced and clutched his midsection.  
"Rob-in, Raven hit me!" he complained.  
"He started it," Raven called back.  
"I don't care _who_ started it, just stop!" Robin said, a headvein forming.  
"I'm still hungry. When do we eat?" Terra whined as she rubbed her flat, empty stomach.  
Cyborg, his face crimson and steaming, moved from his control panel to adress his companions at the rear of the ship. "If you don't all stop it I'm going to turn this ship RIGHT around and head home, now SHUT UP, ALREADY!"  
All the others where breifly shocked into silence, and then began arguing anew. It was at that point that Starfire, who had been uncomfortably silent during this affair, called something to her fellow Titans' attention by means of a breif tamerian folk song and a small starbolt. "What is indicated when this red button flashes and the yellow object points the 'E' letter?" she queried with an anxious look on her face.  
All the others stared on with wide, white eyes in a group "oh shit" look. "We're out of fuel," Cyborg said rethorically, paused, and then repeated in a panic "WE'RE OUT OF FUEL!"

"Shall I 'get out and push' then?" Starfire asked hopefully.  
"Well, that _might_ work, if we weren't already caught in a planetary atmosphere. Fortunately, it's only Pluto, so if we work together really hard we just might get out of this alive," Cyborg answered. "Robin, you fire all the blasters towards the surface. Starfire, you get out and pull the ship from behind, Terra, see if you can use the rock salt in the ship ore to lift us, Raven, you try to slow our descent, and Beast Boy,"  
"Yes?"  
"Get me a soda. If I do die, I wanna die with caffine and sugar in my bloodstream."  
"Yes sir!" Beast Boy replied in half ernest, half sarcastic manner. 

The ship managed to land with minor damages to the hull and occupants. Raven and Starfire could survive in a vacuum, and Cyborg had a built-in bio-containment screen, so only half the crew needed space suits. As they surveyed the dark, lonely plutonian landscape, the sun only a mildly brighter star amongst the distant myriad, there view was dominated by two objects. One was a silo of corn with the words "Property of Cosmo" written on it in 8ft tall letters. Another was what appeared to be a small city.

As they began to approach the city, they noticed some people. As they got closer they saw that "people" was a wholly inappropriate term.  
Though seemingly intelligent enough to build a city, these were definitely better fit by the description of "things". They possessed a pair of large wings wholly unlike those of insects, bats, or birds. Their massive forms where lumpily irregular. They skittered about on some crab-like legs which seemed to be in altogether the wrong number. The crustacean appearance was further reinforced by the carapace coating the body, the massive pincers/claws, and the insectoid, antenna-bearing head. The communed with on another by changing their head color and releasing small clouds of scented gas. Whatever they were, "humanoid" was definitely not it.

As the Titans went closer to look, some of the things began flashing their heads a bright purple and releasing a stream of green vapor. As if signaled by this, several of them leapt into the air and began soaring towards them.

Needless to say, on a planet lacking any kind of atmosphere to conduct sound, the Titans were rather surprised to hear on of the creatures speak to them. They were even more surprised when they realized it was coming from their com system and it was speaking in perfect English.  
"HELLO CREATURES FROM EARTH WELCOME TO YUGGOTH," it spoke in a soulless, buzzing monotone, "WE HAVE NOTICED THAT YOUR VESSEL IS DAMAGED ARE YOU IN NEED OF ASSISTANCE?"  
As Raven, Terra, Robin, Beast Boy, and Cyborg stood flabbergasted, Starfire turned to the creature and spoke into her communicator.  
"Yes, please, that would be most wonderful."  
"Starfire, are these friends of yours?" Robin asked over the communicator.  
"Oh, no, I have not met them before, but I am familiar with their civilization. These are the Migo. They are a very advanced and intelligent race of scientists."  
"THE TAMERANIAN IS CORRECT WE ARE THE MIGO WOULD YOU PLEASE ACCOMPANY US TO THE CITY WHILE MY COMPANIONS WORK TO REPAIR YOUR SHIP?"  
"I suppose so," said Robin warily.

The Migo directed them to an impossibly tall cyclopean building. "YOU MAY STAY HERE WHILE WE REPAIR YOUR VEHICLE" it said in the same buzzing, toneless insectoid voice, and then left.

Once they had reached their quarters and sealed the airlock, Robin removed his helmet and turned to the others.   
"So, what do you think of these 'Migo'?" Robin asked his companions in general.  
"Well, they weren't kidding about the 'intelligent' bit," Raven responded, "they've got massive mental capacities, not to mention psychic and magical skill. It wouldn't surprise me if they've got some powerful magic in addition to mind-blowing technological skill."  
"Super-intelligent or not, I just don't like them messing around in my ship," Cyborg complained.  
"I'm afraid we don't have much of a choice," Robin replied. "It's already severely damaged and out of fuel. Starfire, could you fill us in some more about these Migo?"  
"Well, they are great travelers of space, and although they are native to this planet they have many dealings with the nether-universe outside of normal space. They worship the omnipotent Yog-Sothoth, god of time and space. They have incredible surgical skills and can often restore patients who have been allegedly 'dead' for several hours. They are known for general hospitality to endangered space travelers."  
"Well, that means they probably won't try to kill us," Beast Boy said cheerily, "I mean why else would they help take us in and fix our ship?"

Mean while, a pair of alien sensory organs stared emotionlessly at the titans through a device far to complex to be called a "screen" but close enough for our purposes to regard as such. The little device displayed each member's surface thoughts, overall knowledge distribution, intellect, general common sense and awareness of surroundings, and empathetic ability and interpersonal skills. _Which ones should we abduct first?_ pondered the otherworldly super-human mind.

They continued to discuss their otherworldly hosts until the topic was completely exhausted. From then on the conversation degraded. It culminated in Beast Boy and Robin discussing the virtues of briefs vs. boxers, respectively. Eventually they ended the debate in a frenzy of anger by each ripping off their outer garments to reveal the clothing articles in question, eliciting a whistle of appreciation from the three females and causing Cyborg to turn away his head so fast he blew a fuse. It was at this climax of awkwardness that one of the Migo entered the room. For a moment it just stood their, head alternately flashing neon orange and lime green and emitting the citrus aroma that was the Migo equivalent of laughter. After it recovered it asked them in the monotone buzz that seemed endemic to these creatures' spoken voice "IF IT WOULD BE PLEASING GOVERNER MBUNG INVITES YOU TO DINE WITH HIM,"  
Raven, naturally suspicious, was about to politely refuse when she was interrupted by a rumbling reminiscent of a moving van crashing into a meat-packing plant. Terra blushed and hungrily rubbed her tummy. The Migo, without waiting for another answer, escorted them to the central room.


	3. Chapter 3

The Titans had had many encounters with Starfire's cooking, and while a bit odd, she at least possessed a superficial resemblance to a human. They braced themselves for what semi-animate horrors might confront them with this truly alien cuisine. As such they were quite pleasantly surprised to see the inhuman Migo present them with chocolate milk, Hershey bars, and peanut butter and jelly sandwiches.

"Wait, so you eat normal food like us?" Beast Boy asked incredulously. 

"THAT IS NOT TRUE WE INGEST A VERY DIFFERENT KIND OF SUSTENANCE HOWEVER OUR XENOBIOLOGISTS TELL US THAT MOST OF OUR FOOD WOULD PROVE UNAPPETIZING AND INEDIBLE TO YOU IF NOT OUTRIGHT POISONOUS WE USED ADVANCED CARBON SYNTHESIZER DRIVES TO CREATE THE MEAL YOU SEE BEFORE YOU" 

"I don't suppose you could carbon synthesize a T-bone steak?" Cyborg asked hopefully.

"I AM AFRAID NOT ANIMAL TISSUE IS EXTREMELY MORE COMPLEX THAN PLANT DERIVATIVE SUBSTANCES AND SUCH INTRICATE PROTIENS ARE BEYOND EVEN OUR TECHNOLOGY" 

"Maybe I could see if I can calibrate it to create meat?" Cyborg suggested.

The Migo gave off a mild hint of lemon and briefly flashed a yellow-green, but directed him to the machine. As he attempted to interface, his uplink device sparked, then a screen on his arm popped up with a tiny image of a guy trying to take a bite out of a gigantic rock with the word "data" on it, cracking his teeth, then running away and crying like a little girl. Cyborg then went into chibi with a dunce cap on his head and did the "blblblble" thing with his lips while the Migos broke into a chorus of orange and green flares until the whole smelled like lemons. 

"Um, could you possibly make pizza?" Robin asked. 

"NO I AM AFRAID THE HETEROGENIOUS MIXTURE YOU SO OVERSIMPLY CALL 'PIZZA' COMBINES SO MANY SPECIES OF HERB AND COMPLEX SUBDEGREES OF BACTERIALLY TRANSMUTED MILK PROTIENS IT WOULD BE PROHIBITIVELY DIFFICULT TO CREATE" 

"Hmghmnorph(1)?" Terra asked.

"YES, PLEASE HELP YOURSELVES TO ADDITIONAL SERVINGS YOU NEED ONLY PRESS THE SILVER BUTTON ON THE TOP OF THE MACHINE" 

Cyborg and Terra dashed over eagerly to the machine while Robin tried to strike up a conversation.

"So...what brings you to Pluto?" he said somewhat awkwardly. 

"WE ARE RESIDING HERE BECAUSE OF THE GENERAL REMOTENESS OF THIS PLANET AND THE DISTANCE OF THIS SOLAR SYSTEM FROM MOST CIVILIZED REGIONS OF THE GALAXY" 

"WE REQUIRE A CERTAIN AMOUNT OF DISTANCE FROM HOSTILE ENTITIES OR OPPOSED FACTIONS TO COMMUNE WITH THE OUTSIDE" 

"What exactly do you mean by 'the outside'" 

"THE OUTSIDE IS A POLYDIMENSIONAL UNIVERSE BEYOND SPACE, LIGHT, AND TIME AS YOU UNDERSTAND THE CONCEPTS IN THIS NEBULOUS HIGHER PLANE OF EXISTANCE DWELL GREATER BEINGS THAT TO BEINGS SUCH AS YOURSELF WOULD APPEAR TO BE GODS IT WOULD BE VIRTUALLY IMPOSSIBLE TO DESCRIBE THIS REGION OF SIZELESS SPACE AGELESS TIME AND DEIFIC SENSORY PROPORTIONS TO YOU WITHOUT DRIVING YOU TO HOPELESS INSANITY SAVE THE ONE YOU CALL 'RAVEN'" 

"I see..." said Robin, not quite sure how to respond. 

_I wonder what they do eat?_ thought Beast Boy as he chewed his initial bite of sandwich from molecular particles to its basic atomic structure, his body caught in a loop while his brain was in an unusually deep state of contemplation. 

_Hm, what do crabs eat? Or at least crab people? Heh, crab-people crab people, that was a great episode. Gah, crabs...people...you don't eat humans do you?_

"THE VERY NOTION OF ONE OF OUR SPECIES HAVING DEVELOPED ON ENTIRELY DIFFERENT PLANETS EVOLVING TO PREY UPON ANOTHER IS BIOLOGICALLY ABSURD AND EVEN THEN YOUR VERY SKIN SECRETIONS WOULD DOUBTLESS HAVE A CAUSTIC EFFECT ON OUR DIGESTIVE TENDRILS MAKING PREDATION OF YOU BY US NIGH IMPOSSIBLE  
IN ADDITION DESPITE THE SIMILAR APPEARANCE WE ARE MORE FUNGOID THAN CRUSTACEAN IN NATURE ALTHOUGH WE TRUTHFULLY ARE BEYOND THE LIMITS OF YOUR TAXONOMICAL SYSTEM" 

"Hey, did you just read my thoughts?" Beast Boy asked. 

"NOT EXACTLY IT WAS MORE LIKE I OVERHEARD THEM" 

"Wha?" 

"YOU WERE THINKING AT ME AND I PICKED UP YOUR MENTAL TRANSMISSION" 

"Huh?" 

"IT WOULD TAKE HOURS TO EXPLAIN BUT LETS JUST CALL IT THE PSYCHIC EQUIVALENT OF OVERHEARING SOMETHING MUTTERED UNDER ONES BREATH" 

"Okay," Beast Boy said, still not fully understanding but to ashamed to admit his incomprehension. 

"PLEASE TELL US ABOUT YOURSELF 'BEAST BOY'" 

"Well, I can-" 

"WE HAVE ALREADY COME TO UNDERSTAND YOUR SHAPE-SHIFTING ABILITIES. PLEASE SHARE WITH US YOUR KNOWLEDGE OF EARTHLY CULTURE AND ENTERTAINMENT" 

Starfire was delighted to discover most of the Migo were also fluent in Tamaranian and soon became engaged in an animated conversation about who knows what in her native tongue(4). 

Beast Boy tried to start off with a kind of general relay of whatever recent scientific discoveries he had come across in the newspaper while searching for the funnies, with a gentle prod in the right direction he soon relayed his vast trove of information on various graphic novels, situation comedies, "reality" TV shows, and the like, while the alien being listened on with keen interest. 

He was just interrupted in his rant about "The Apprentice" when there came a complaining shreik from the carbon synthesizer as a blushing, sweatdropping, bloated-to-the-point-were-her-expanded-stomach-bulged-out-from-under-her-loose-oversized-shirt Terra backed away the device as it started to give off smoke. "Um, I think I might have used it a few times too many(3): she sheepishly admitted. One of the Migo went over to examine it and flashed blue and gave off a whiff of cinnamon. "I hope I didn't break it," Terra said apologetically. The creature muttered a few impolite-sounding words in an ancient-sounding unpronounceable language before closing the access hatch and informing them that it was only a little overheated and would be fine if they stopped using it for a few arns.  
"OF COURSE YOU MUST BE TIRED BY NOW," the otherworldly creature suggested, with just a hint of conspiratorial condescension. "Actually, _(yawn)_, n-now that you mention it I do feel kind of tired," Terra said, stretching and rubbing her stomach with a contented burp. "Me too," Beast Boy sleepily agreed. "I guess you loose track of the time without any sun nearby," Robin commented. They were all lead to their rooms.

Beast Boy lay back on the yielding, soft, almost gel-like fabric that covered his bedding. He was so relaxed he failed to notice the metallic clawed object slowly approaching the back of his head...

(1)She was trying to say "have any more sandwiches?" but she currently had her entire plate(2) crammed into her mouth along with Cyborg's and whatever Beast Boy had failed to finish in the first 2.3 seconds and therefore had obviously set aside specifically for her 

(2)Not just the food but the actual PLATE 

(3)Well, she didn't actually use it repeatedly so much as stuck her mouth over the food ejection tube and held the button down 

(4)They were in fact discussing the various virtues of gelsperball, a complex sport wherein scoring a goal required one player to insert the ball and their entire body inside the opposing goalie's nostril


	4. Chapter 4

Road Trip Chapter 4

The nefarious robotic member began by applying a powerful local anesthetic to the back of his skull. It then carefully made its incision, a blade so sharp that it could pierce bone like butter, yet so carefully maneuvered that the grey matter was unharmed and the area cut could be healed back together in seconds afterwards. Carefully, within under a minute, the precision devices all lined up and did their work. His peaceful face suddenly froze and waz distorted by wild spasms as his body, in the process of having its central nervous system removed, began flopping around like a freshly caught trout.

The next thing he knew Beast Boy was staring down at his own body. _Whoa...I must be having one of those out-of-body experiences. I guess I'll just fly over and-wait, why can't I fly? I'm being carried...hey, was that a claw?_  
"WHATS GOING ON?" he yelled in desperation, and then was horrified to find the sound of his own voice to be mechanical, emotionless, and monotone, like that of the Migo.  
He was turned around to face the head of one of the plutonian fungoids itself, looking down at him with a sea-green face and a mild vanilla aroma that passed for a smile. It turned him so that he faced a mirror to see, staring back where he should have been, was a metal jar-like cylinder.  
"NOOOOOOO"

"GAH WHAT DID YOU DO TO ME WHERE'S MY BODY?!" Beast Boy asked in the mechanical voice.  
"TO ANSWER YOUR LAST QUESTION FIRST YOUR BODY IS ON THE BED, RIGHT WHERE YOU LEFT IT" it said with a sarcastic red, "AND WE REMOVED YOUR BRAIN AND PUT IT IN A JAR"

_Hah, my friends will come to save me!_ Beast Boy thought hopefully.

The creature breifly flashed burnt orange and sea green with a strong tangerine breeze in what passed for a diabolic laughter. "I'M AFRAID YOUR 'FRIENDS' WON'T BE JOINING US THEY DON'T EVEN HERE YOU THANKS TO THE 'BREATH OF HYPNOS'"  
_Damn, I forgot about the telepathy thing. What is the "Breath of Hypnos" anyway?_  
"IT IS A SPELL THAT INDUCES FATIGUE AND KEEPS SLEEPERS SLEEPING FOR A LONG TIME" it said with a snide indigo hue, "NOBODY WILL BE ABLE TO COME TO YOUR RESCUE"  
"Especially not me," said a dry, biting, sarcastic voice.

"RAVEN?!" Beast Boy said through the monotonous apparatus, trying to convey incredulous surprise and joy at the same time.  
"BUT HOW CAN THAT BE WE CAST THE BREATH OF HYPNOS YOU SHOULD NOT BE ABLE TO RISE" demanded the amazed Migo.  
"The Breath of Hypnos only works if your stupid enough to give in to it and fall asleep. A preserved myself in a semiconscious state by mediating, my thinking mind distant enough from my body to fool you and the spell, but close enough that I was ready to spring into action. I sensed some suspicious activity, so I flew here."  
"YOU ARE TRULY YOUR FATHER'S CHILD HOWEVER EVEN THE QUASIHOMONID SPAWN OF TRIGON ARE NO MATCH FOR OUR FORSIGHT..._Veericantas, abjume, xanfig DELTROSK!_" the migo chanted in a deep octavated voice, "Azerath Metrion ZYNTHOS!" Raven countered have a moment too late, and there was a blinding flash of light and a deafening shriek. When visibility was restored both the alien creature and Beast Boy's brain were nowhere to be seen. "**DAMN IT**!" Raven cursed so fiercely that a little flicker of hellfire erupted from her mouth. Beast Boy's body stared on vacantly and salivated. "I AM BEAST BOY, PLEASE INSERT TOFU" he said. Wakened by a combination of the noise and Raven's wave of dispelling, the other Titans head rushed in. "What happened?" Robin demanded authoritatively. "One of our friendly hosts flew off with Beast Boy's fun-size grey matter," Raven said gravely. "I AM BEAST BOY, PLEASE INSERT TOFU," Beast Boy added. "He's in danger?" Terra said nervously. "No, I'm sure he's fine. The fungoid, trans-planar alien technomancer to whom humans are no more intelligent or civilized than mealworms probably took him off to faery land, where the little elves dance round enchanted toadstools and sing lullabies to the field mice in their feety pajamas," she said with caustic sarcasm.

"So, what do we do now?" Terra asked. "How can we find him?"  
"Fortunately, each Titan has a tiny tracer chip implanted in their brain. I can probably pic up its signal before it leaves range, depending on how fast their traveling," Robin said.  
"Okay then-WHAT? YOU PUT A TRACER IN OUR BRAINS?" Cyborg said in alarm. "WHEN? HOW?!(1)"  
"That isn't important, however, about this signal tracer-" Robin said, hastily trying to change the subject.  
"No, it IS important, because apparently you've been PLAYING AROUND IN MY BRAIN! You know I hate it when people do that!" he raged.  
"Um, yeah, that's pretty flucked-up(2)." Terra said with a mix of incredulity and offense.  
"I did not even know I possessed a central nervous system," said a confused Starfire.  
"I planted yours somewhere else," Robin said, sweat-dropping a turning beet-red.  
"Why you little-wait, how would you even do that? It would fall out the first time I used my shadow door?" Raven said shifting instantly from cold rage to perplexment.  
"I enchanted it with the spell of Mennec and the Binding of Ra," Robin said quickly.  
"You...you can cast spells? And spells from the Legrion scrolls?" Raven was at this point twitching and didn't seem to notice the trail of spittle hanging from her slack jaw.  
"Um, well I have a few resources," he said vaguely, followed by a long, awkward pause that was broken by a Migo walking in. Eager for an opportunity to silence dissent with the heat of combat, he whipped out his extendable metal pole, turned towards the fungoid, and shouted "Titans, GO!"

(1)3:16AM, two nights ago, with a WayneCorp medical droid, while the fellow titans where all fully unconscious from the after-affects of attending the grand opening of the all-you-can-eat-Pizza/Sushi/BBQ/Thai food buffet.

(2) A term coined by political opponents of Representative Vianna Fluck

Robin lunged and drove his pole into the thing's surprisingly yielding flesh as it flared from bright blue to ultraviolet and gave off a strong odor of flames and sulphur in a silent scream of pain. Cyborg rushed in and rammed it against the wall with a headbutt, and Starfire seared its flesh with an angry blast from her eyes. It seemed to writhe and boil quite easily, as if it came from a place alien to light energy. Raven was just preparing to split it down the middle when she clutched her head as it telepathically shrieked into her mind, and she verbally mimicked it "STOOOOOOOP! I SURRENDER! I SURRENDER! STOOOOP! PAAAAIIIN! YOU MOTHER-FU" and then she fell over and began writhing in empathically transmitted agony. Robin coldly dismissed her and grabbed the creature roughly by its wings, squeezing till a sickly yellow stuff oozed out where his fingers dug in. "Tell us where Beast Boy is," he said in a restrained and deliberate voice. Raven then flinched again and gave another psychic relay. "That's what I was **going** to do before _you_ came in and attacked me!" came an exasperated cry in a voice that was not her own. Robin, Cyborg, and Starfire all then sweat-dropped and became very very small for a little bit. "Damn, that's the second alien we've wrongly beat the crap out of this week(1)," Robin said sheepishly.  
"Oh, it's fine, I've only got my entrails currently hanging on your metal stick," said Raven in a tone almost identical to her normal voice. Robin hastily pulled them off and handed them to the wounded creature, which snatched them curtly and tried to shove them back in.  
"Will you now tell us where our friend is?" Starfire asked. "Well, I'm somewhat disinclined to inform people who just disemboweled me without provocation, but since I'm a nice guy I'll tell you after I can patch up my organs."  
"Hey, one more thing, why do you have to talk through Raven?" Cyborg asked. "Migo don't naturally have vocal cords, a few of us get speaking devices implanted to help communicate with lesser races(2). That's also why they all sound monotonous and buzzy," it said and headed off to an adjacent room to seal up its intestines.  
"I wonder how Beast Boy's doing right now," Terra thought outloud...

(1)Last week they had a **very** unfortunate incident involving a friendly Extra Terrestrial and his friend Eliot that ended in 3 lawsuits, 1 charge of attemped homocide, 4 charges of assualt, and 7 kidney transplants.  
(2)Or to just annoy the hell out of their roommates when they're studying prophesies of the old ones written in the tongue of the gods 


	5. Chapter 5

_Where are you taking me?_ Beast Boy mentally asked the winged space creature holding his fragile cranium, and was met with icy silence. He could only think and stare on helplessly as they left pluto and drifted towards a nameless outer planetoid.

As he reached the planetoid, he was carried into a small building and set down on a shelf next to some similar containers. Then the Migo left.

"Who be this new stranger of afar, come to us in mind in silver cylinder by herme's wings?"  
"I'll ask. Good sir, what be your name?"  
"Um, my friends call me Beast Boy."  
"Well met Boy of Beasts. I am Arthur of Camelot at your service,"  
"Arthur? As in THE King Arthur, then Pendragon, who pulled Excalibur out of the stone, brought England out of the dark ages, and built the Pyramids?! I thought you were just a fictional character like McGuyver or Abraham Lincoln!"  
"Ah know, I was and still am a living man as much as you, although I'm not sure to what extent you could a disembodied brain a 'man' or 'living'. However, there have been a few embellishments and creative liberties taken about me. For example, Excalibur was actualy a mystical scythe rather than a sword, but people seemed to think that had to much association with evil and death for a hero. Honestly, how evil can you call something that harvests crops, compared to a sword, which is soley used as an impliment of killing?"  
"So, who's that guy over there next to you?"  
"I am William Shakespeare."  
"You mean the guy who wrote the plays about the two teenagers who hook up and then kill themselves, and the one about the guy who the three witches say is immortal, but then he gets killed by somebody whose mom had a C-section, and the one about the four kids in the forest where this crazy little elf dude keeps screwin' with them?"  
"I suppose you could describe it that way," the bard said somewhat put off by Beast Boy's crude terminology, "why doth thou ask?"  
"I FRIGGIN HATE YOU!!!" Beast Boy, yelling so loud that his jar shook. "I remember studying you in class, and the teacher practically wetting herself in excitement over every line, with all the 'metaphors' and 'themes' and 'complete scentences' and all that other crap. What's with all the prithees? And all the thous and arts? Everybody raves about how hilarious you are, well let me tell you something, I'm a pretty easy guy to impress, and I didn't get so much as one snicker out of your entire work. It's all puns! First of all, puns don't make sense when they're in german, or whatever crap it is you so-called 'old english' writers crank out, and finally puns as a whole really aren't that funny! Puns are boring! Puns are the lowest form of humor there is! The only people who can make puns funny, and I mean the ONLY people, are the Marx Brothers, and you don't sound like Groucho, Harpo, Chico, or the strait-man guy who quit after 'Duck Soup'."  
"I ask you to refer to Puck's ending speech in 'Midsummernight's Dream'."  
"You mean you're really sorry?"  
"No you brainless flax-wench, it's sarcasm!"  
"Oooh, you jerk!"  
"Good sir, I bid you lick me!"  
"That's it, I'm coming over there!"  
"Bring it you 2 copper courtesan!"  
The two cylinders vibrated furiously as their occupants tried to come over to attack each other but to no avail.  
"SILENCE!" Shouted the Pendragon.  
Both cylinders froze.  
"If you keep bickering like this instead of acting like civilized humans, you'll eventually shake us of the shelf and doubtless splatter us open to die. Now, Shakespear, apologize for indirectly causing academic pain to Beast Boy and millions of his peers."  
"My sincere apologies," the bard said reluctantly and tinged with sarcasm.  
"Now, Beast Boy, apologize to Shakespear for insulting his life's work."  
"I'm sorry," Beast Boy said sheepishly.

It was then that the Migo returned and took Beast Boy for questioning.  
"DO YOU KNOW WHY WE HAVE BROUGHT YOU HERE?"  
"Um, not really. I would've thought you'd take Raven, or Cyborg, or Robin, but not me. Unless you want to know about sit-coms and graphic novels."  
"THAT IS INDEED DISTURBINGLY CLOSE TO THE TRUTH"  
"OVER THE YEARS WE HAVE AMASSED MUCH KNOWLEDGE OF YOUR LEVEL OF SCIENCE, TECHNOLOGY, MATHEMATICS, HISTORY, AND THE LIKE"  
"HOWEVER WE REMAIN QUITE IN THE DARK AS TO YOUR CULTURAL NATURE"  
"THAT IS WHY WE HAVE TAKEN YOU FOR INTEROGATION"  
"Well, in that case, ask away I guess. What do you want me to tell you first?"  
"HOW DID THE CAST OF 'WINGS' STAY ON FOR SO LONG?"  
"That's an easy one. You see, d-"  
The roof shattered as the titans landed, two of them in space suits. "Sorry to crash in." Robin said.  
"Give back Beast Boy's brain, bitches!" Demanded Terra.  
"WE WONT SURRENDER IT WITHOUT A FIGHT!" one of them challenged.  
"Titans, GO!"

This isn't really humorous, but I just want to take the time to point out that, at the very end of the tale, Arthur was carried away by a "ship with no rower or sail", so I sort of theorized that as something of a space ship.

Robin leapt forward at one of the Migo and wing at it with his pole. It dodged and chanted something arcane sounding, followed by "WITHER LIMB!" and a black bolt of energy shot out and struck his right arm. The aformentioned member shrunk and shriveled as it turned an unhealthy color, and when he tried another feeble swing with the now useless appendage his weapon fell out of it and clattered to the floor. As cyborg charged at the other one, it folded its hands together and chanted a quick, diabolic-sounding incantation. "GRASP OF CTHULHU!" it cried, before eight formless transparent tentacles reached out of nowhere and pinned the biomechanoid hero in an iron grapple.  
Terra stood with fists clenched and eyes glowing as her squadron of boulders soared from the ship's cargo area towards the planetoid on which she stood, but one of the creatures gave lyrical whistle, soothingly whispered "song of hastur". She then relaxed her powers and began to stare out blankly a she danced and hummed to a tune that nobody else could hear. Starfire swooped in and unleashed a merciless storm of starbolts and eye-blasts that caused the things to recoil and burn with the ultraviolet glow of pain. She was about to finish them off when another one literally appeared behind her and touched her on the shoulder, transfering some unknown energy. Her eyes flashed with despair and she collapsed in a sobbing heap as the enchantment assaulted her senses.

All this time Raven had been standing, eyes closed, chanting at such a speed that it was impossible to tell whether it was her ordinary mantra or some unknown invocation. Having more or less dispatched with the fellow titans, the supernatural extraterrestrials all turned to her, and fired off crippling bolts of debilatating magic. She finished at the last moment, opened her eyes, and a silver glow ensheathed her, snatching up all the offensive spells and hurling them back at their casters. The overwhelmed Migo then fell back, overcome and defeated. "YOU ARE THE VICTOR" their leader said plainly, and then with a wave of his claws the four of them vanished.

"Alright then..." Robin said, still a little dazed by the rapid succession of it all, "now we just have to get Beast Boy and go."

He then turned around and gasped as he saw the tens upon hundreds of identical metal cylinders.

"If we can find him," Raven said dryly.

"How shall we find our friend Beast Boy? I see no labels or other forms of identification," Starfire queried.  
"You could just ask him," buzzed a mechanical voice.  
"Who said that?" Robin asked.  
"I did."  
"Where are you?" Robin asked.  
"Right here,"  
"Where?"  
"Follow my voice."  
Robin walked over ot the source to find a cluster of metal cylinders. "I still can't see you."  
"I'm right in front of your face genious!" the voice yelled.  
"Where?"  
"Alright, close your eyes, then listen to the voice, and move your ear closer until you bump into something.  
Robin obeyed and found himself with his head against one of the jars.  
"You're in the jar?"  
"Congratulations Einstein," the detached cerebrum snapped.  
"How can you talk without any mouth?"  
"These containers have a speech aparatus on them, along with one for hearing and one for seeing."  
"So then we just need to say something that beast boy will answer too?"  
"Brilliant. Give the man a cigar," the severed mind said obnoxiously.  
"Well, there's one sure way to find Beast Boy then," Cyborg said, and then he inhaled and made a sort of coughing motion with his mouth. He looked at his arm screen and a little red light flashed. "Dang, I'm out of gas," Cyborg quipped. The other's sweatdropped. "Lovely," Raven commented. They paused for a moment.  
"Unless you want to go up and start asking each one I suggest you try to burp," Cyborg said turning to his team-mates. Robin managed a pathetic little "ep", and Raven squeezed out a half-hiccup. Starfire inhaled deeply, frowned in concentration, and then emitted a rude sound that resembled the death throes of a trumpet accompanied with an unpleasant smell. Her companions winced and changed a variety of unnatural colors as the smell traveled, while Starfire blushed a deep crimson. After a wheezing and coughing Cyborg briefly opened and then closed the airlock to release the noxious vapors, the four turned and looked a Terra. With a look of intent concentration, she inhaled, opened her mouth, and  
"**BEEEEEEOOOOOOOUUUUUUUURRRRP!**"

After the tremors had stopped and the dust cleared, the sound of near-hysterical laughter led them to one particular silver container. After calming down a little, the greatly impressed Beast Boy complemented Terra with an enthusiastic "Nice one!"  
She blushed slightly and mumured a little "thanks," before picking up the young superhero's jar and clutching it tight. "HEY, MORONS! What about me?" called the voice from earlier. "Aren't youz clods gonna take me back to earth?" Robin walked up and glared at it. "I wonder how you turn these things off," he inquired threatingly. "Oh don't you even think about it! I pointed you idiots in the right direction! You're nothing without me! Nothing! NOTH-" the rant was cut short as Robin located the "speech" dial and set it to zero. "Silence is golden," he replied, before leaving with the others. (1)

When the Titans returned to the Migo city, they were needless to say somewhat upset about the attempted kidnapping of Beast Boy's brain. They went to the leader and had an intelligent discussion(2), after which they reached the following agreements:  
1. Some of the Migo's tried to abduct a team member, which was less than friendly  
2. After eating the Migos' food and getting their ship fixed the titans almost killed an innocent Migo who was trying to help them out, so  
3. Number 1 and number 2 more or less balance out  
4. In exchange for some tissue samples, consisting of a small blood sample from Raven, Terra, Cyborg, Starfire, and Robin, and from Beast Boy a sample of as many different organs and tissues as they could think of(3) do to the fact that he could regenerate tissues lost with his DNA based shape-shifting, the Titans would get a carbon-synthesizer for their own use.

5. When they got back to earth, if they managed to reverse engineer it, all rights to the carbon-synthesizer would go to Wayne Industries(4)

So it was that our newly prepared protagonists set off again to cross the infinite void of space.  
"Are we there yet?"

(1) Don't worry. Somebody turned it back on again later, so the brain wasn't stuck like that forever, and eventually he was returned to earth and now has a political talk-show called Spin Factor.

(2)By which I mean one that did not contain any statements that directly questioned the marital status of another person's parents at the time of their conception and kept phrases beginning with the words "yo' momma" to a 3 per person minimum  
(3)They ran out of ideas after "urethra lining"  
(4)Robin's defense for this idea was that big-screen TVs, pizzas, and high-grade security systems don't grow on trees


	6. Chapter 6

It had been several hours since they took off. Beast Boy and Terra were engaged in a game of checkers, which wasn't really going anywhere because they kept leaving openings for each other and sparing one another's pieces out of affection while murmuring loving complements to each other. Raven had given up on subtly hinting the sickeningly-enamored pair with gagging noises and small prods with semi-lethal objects and grabbed some good books(1) and some fresh cucumber and ranch dressing and headed off to be alone. Robin and Cyborg where arguing over the map and if they were going the right way. Meanwhile Starfire sat alone, uncharacteristically quiet, as she closed her eyes and remembered.

In her younger years on Tamaran, Starfire celibrated the Cthgha-Niggurathian festival with her family. Back then her sister Blackfire and her were on better terms, although there was something distant in her that she could not quite place. Her foster parent raised them, her father having vanished under mysterious circumstances and her mother having been openly assassinate by her half-brother for control of the throne. At that time her royal decadence was not known, since her egg was abandoned nameless in a common hatching ground. This however was not that uncommon, most parents simply laid their eggs in a group hatchery where they were adopted by single parents.

It was her seventh year that she learned to recite the group prayer "Aye aye! Shubi Nigguroth ftagn! Aye aye! Cthugha ftagn! Tameran ftagn, panga ftagn, aye aye aye!" although due to an adorable speech impediment it and an ear infection it came out more like "Eee-wee! Subway briggoth flbagn!"  
Her foster parent didn't have much, but they were happy. All they really needed was a place to sleep, crops to grow, kkkneeyida to milk, live garlthee-beasts to eat, and of course love and attention of which they had plenty.

Then one night, they came. Out of the sky soared a uniform silvery disk with glowing lights. As the powerful traction beam locked onto her and her sister, they tried to break free with all their might, dragging the vehicle through the Tamaranian atmosphere, but eventually the alien vessel overcame them.

She awoke disabled and immobilized on a table as alien creatures humans referred to as "the greys" looked down at her. It's fascinating how much you can anthropomorphize something. While bearing four limbs, a torso, and a head, the greys bore little resemblance to the big-headed humanoids we usually picture. They eyes where very narrow almonds, making them seem sinister and menacing. Their "legs" and "arms" where virtually identical in form and function, each a 3ft tentacle ending in three smaller tentacles. The creatures usually only raised one at a time and had difficult standing on two, so the more busy ones where constantly leaning forward and hunched over which had a fairly frightening effect on whoever they were examining lain flat. Worst of all was the mouth. A narrow slit in the head, it had some bioluminescent organ in it. It constantly released little puffs of mildly discolored steam accompanied by a nearly continuous soft whistling and hissing sound. Small tendrils and serrated members of unguessable function poked in and out of them.   
The greys where testing a new kind of weapon on the Tamaranian siblings that worked by teleporting solar energy to the target. Unfortunately for them Tameranians absorb sunlight to create their starbolts, and even if all consciously controlled body functions are shut down they will reflexively release excess to keep from overheating. Hence it was that the ship was destroyed in a massive explosion of green and purple. When the dust cleared, she couldn't find her sister. Sad and alone, she drifted aimlessly towards the nearest planet, a blue-brown world, the third planet from the sun...

Starfire was jarred from her reminiscence by a jolt as the ship shuddered. She saw just in time to join her companions in a gaze of horror at the glowing tunnel in space they were rapidly approaching. Time slowed out of proportion and the vessel spaghettied as the singularity began to suck them in...

(1)Among them where Goth Bishi's Weekly, Hotter than hell: Incubus-on-incubus yaoi action, and "The Collected Works of Robert Frost"

Traveling through the worm-hole was an experience like no other. There is no real way to relate or describe the experience, save that they emerged at the other end screaming and reflexively clutching the nearest person in infantile terror. After they calmed down, Robin and Cyborg realized they were embracing and promptly leapt away from each other so fast they received whiplash and comically smashed themselves against the walls. Beast Boy and Terra merely relaxed their grips a little with relieved sighs, and Starfire let go upon noticing that Raven was turning purple and making weak gasping noises. She blushed slightly as Raven set about repairing her ribs and catching her breath.

"What happened?" Beast Boy inquired, still clinging to Terra. "We got shot through a worm-hole," Cyborg said, preparing some scientific-sounding but essentially meaningless explanation tied up for Beast Boy with a simple metaphor. "Oh, like in Farscape. Hey, maybe we'll meet Jon Criton!" he said hopefully.  
"Beast Boy, Farscape is science fiction. It's not real," Raven said. "Oh yeah, well that's not what James Bond told me online!" Beast Boy defended, provoking a mass stupidity fall.

"So, where are we now?" Beast Boy asked. "I don't know...the worm-hole could have sent us anywhere."  
"Let's find out," said Robin. As they stared out the viewscreen, they gazed upon a scene of desolation... 

(1)and wetting


	7. Chapter 7

All around them floated ships...all of them either damaged or destroyed, the dead crew floating about in them, forever frozen and preserved by the vaccum of space. Their cold blue faces gazed out, frozen, as if they were suddenly smote by something the never even saw coming...something that didn't even give them time to scream.

Starfire shivered. "Please, l-let us leave soon. I do not like it here, it feels...wrong." Beast Boy was so scared, staring at they myriad of dead faces, that he burst into chibi form, jumped into terra's mouth, zipped it shut, put a note on it saying "Do not open until christmas" and began to shiver violently.

"Unfortunately I can't do that yet. The wormhole shorted out our phase-buffers. We're going to have to salvage some new ones from this wreck." 

Starfire looked out at the floating mortuary and shivered. It reminded her of the old tales of enorbiod she'd heard as a little girl, and she couldn't shake the feeling that she was being intently watched...

"Well then, I guess we'd better each fan out to increase improve our chances," Robin said authoritatively as he donned his space suit. He then walked over to Terra, and pulled off the "do not open until christmas" tag. He then pulled apart her jaws, reached in, fumbling around and pulled out some chicken bones(1), an unwrapped three muskateers bar, a footstool, a severely disgruntled cat, and finally a wet and terrified Beast Boy.   
"Like it or not, we have to find a replacement part, otherwise we'll be floating here forever. Now get on your spacesuit and search, or you'll be grounded for a week." He said in the most commanding parental voice he could muster. Beast Boy then proceeded to get on his airtight but highly elastic customized suit and grumbled. "Raven, Terra, Starfire, you should prepare too. The sooner we find this part, the sooner we can get out of here. Cyborg, you stay here and monitor the ship and the surrounding area."  
"Might we go in pairs?" pleaded Starfire. "Sorry, but we want to cover as much area as possible. You go port, beast boy will head starboard, I'll go rocketside, Terra will head frontside, Raven will go topside and the new probe will examine bottomside."  
The others stared blankly for a few seconds, and then Beast Boy asked "what's port?" Robin shook his head, gave a little sigh, pointed his finger, and said "you go that way, you go that way, you go that way, you go that way, and I'll go this way."

(1)Well, some kind of bones, he preferred not to explore the possibilities

Starfire shivered as she wandered through the broken vessels, periodically checking the readings on the new scanner Cyborg had worked out. Her mind jumped against her will back to the stories her older sister would frighten her with. The tails always began with a poetic description of the cold, empty void of space. Then she would tell about void wind, a kind of magical hybrid of gases and nothingness. She would go on to talk of all the creatures that die out in space at the cruel hand of the vacuum, taking care to vividly describe the cracked, blue skin and cold dead eyes. She said that sometimes the void wind gets into them, and as the breathless dead forms breathe in the immaterial air, they start to gain something more horrific and alien than life. Uncaring dark figures, filled with the icy power of space, the magic of air and death, with hearts as empty and black as the nullity in which they swim.

A rhythmic beeping jarred her thoughts back to reality, and she turned towards the source until she found a large cargo ship. She carefully pried open the door and gave a small squeal as it snapped off in her hand. Carefully she reopened the airlock and went in. Despite her senses being heightened by fear, she didn't see the danger until it literally reached out and grabbed her.

Beast Boy nervously hummed to himself and tried to keep down his lunch as he pried the cold, dead, frosted fingers from the airlock. _Why is it **always** the good-looking comic relief guy who goes first? Why can't it be the hot chick, or the psycho badass, or the religious guy who later goes insane? Why do monsters seem to hate funny people?_  
As he rooted around through the different supplies(1), he thought he saw a movement. He turned around and glared at the darkness, but was met only by the empty eyes of the floating dead.  
"Anybody out there?" he asked, his voice half humor and half pants-soiling terror.  
_"Nobody here but we corpses,"_ replied the darkness around him. "Oh, okay. That's a relief" he said wiping sweat from his brow.  
"Wait...that should be _us_ corpses not we," he thought aloud.  
"Hey, sound doesn't travel in a vaccum," he questioned further.  
The moment the most crucial in this series of revalations hit him, his eyes expanded to the size of dinner plates, then shrunk to white dots. Slowly, shivering, he turned around.

What he saw made him scream like a 6 year old girl and crap his pants.(2)

(1)fuel, research equipment, and copious amount of Tang  
(2)Granted, this was also how he reacted to the sight of Ronald McDonald 

Robin was carefully extracting the ship's data logs when he heard a couple of screams on the intercom in close succession. "Terra! Raven! Starfire and Beast Boy are in trouble, go and h-hgk!" he said as a cold rigid hand began to crush his larynx. Another such hand grasped his come and flung it spinning off into the void. 

Raven was worried. First Starfire, then Beast Boy, and now Robin. Something very bad was happening. As she headed towards the closest source, Starfire's com, she began to feel a chill down her spine, which was odd considering she was already in the cold nothingness of space which averaged absolute zero, protected only by her supernatural immunities to vacuum-burn. She also felt a mounting sensation of dread. She closed her eyes and tried to probe the area with her spiritual senses. She felt the nothingness of space, the stray webs of cosmic radiation, and the current of the void. There was a cluster of large bulges in that ebb and flow, like little sponges greedily drawing in the power of the void. At the same time they seemed to radiate it, rippling presences. There was only a faint soul, yet keen minds hardened by eons of experience and focus. An imbalance, a sense of wrongness, something abominable, something…

Dead.

She soared towards them with a sense of urgency as she fumbled her mind for the necrotic disruption spell.

The screams made Terra jump, and do to the lack of gravity she banged her head against the top of the cargo hold she was in, then bounced back to slam against the floor, and continued for a few more cycles. Upon hearing Robin's announcement, she turned to leave when the airlock was slammed shut by a cold dead hand. The creature facing her was in a faded astronaut suit with a cracked helmet. Its skin was pale blue and cracked, with purple vessels, arteries, and veins. The bleached hair waved even though there was no wind to disturb it. Its eyes were dead, dark eyes, blacker than night, blacker than space, glaring with the blackness of a black hole that doesn't simply absorb light hitting it so much as bends and sucks it in like some shining well of emptyness. Terra shuddered and jumped back. The ex-human spoke to her in an icy voice, faint as a whisper yet blaring and harsh as a blizzard, but it needed no words. Just the look in its dark pits so loosely called eyes was enough to display its sheer malice towards all things living that no the comfort of abundant matter and gravity...


	8. Chapter 8

Road Trip Chapter 8 

Faster than the eye could see, a large rock burst through the hull and slammed the formerly human horror against the wall, moments short of the would-be fatal blow. Terra sighed and struggled to her feet. Her antagonist pushed off the rock, seemingly unphased despite the fact that most of its bones were broken and its face was smashed into a discolored pulp. As it advanced towards her she hit it again, then smashed it several more times. She waited a few minutes, and when the purplish mass stopped moving, she let go of the rock and gave a deep sigh of relief.

When Beast Boy came to, the first thing he noticed was a pair of dead faces staring down at him. Needless to say he was somewhat distressed(1).  
"SPACE ZOMBIES!" he cried, scrambling backwards until one of them grabbed him by the throat and slammed him against the nearest hard surface. "_Zombies_ are mindless shambling meat-puppets obeying the whim of a necromancer. We are **voideborne**, free-willed beings with the power of the quasi-elemental force of vacuum. WE...ARE...**NOT**...ZOMBIES!" the thing hissed with a voice that had the chill of the abyss. "UNDERSTOOD?!"  
"Glkh," said Beast Boy, nodding as vigorously as he could when his neck was locked in a death-grip. "Good," it said, slowly releasing its rigid grasp. As Beast Boy panted and caught his breath, the other one spoke up. "I apologize for my...companion's...behavior. He gets a little touchy about the whole zombie thing."  
"Does this you're not gonna try to kill me, suck out my blood, and use my entrails to replace your lost tissues and swallow my soul?"  
"You're rather imaginative aren't you?" the first one, giving Beast Boy a sanity-questioning stare. "Well, that's good. So why'd you knock me out?"  
"Um, well, honestly we didn't know quite what to do, but knocking the first guy who came in cold seemed like a good idea at the time. Now we're just winging it."  
"Huh...somehow I expected something more elaborate and sinister."  
"Well, it might not look like it but we were just normal guys back when we were alive. "  
"Yah, about that, how did you die anyway?"  
"Ah, that, my friend, is a long story," the first one began. "Pull up a chair and listen."  
"Um, there aren't any chairs."  
"Well then just float their and shut up while I recount my horrific demise, okay?!" 

(1)His precise words were "AAAAH!"

The undead shape sat back and began its tale.  
"_We were originally part of a Mercury exploration mission. Spectral analysis suggested that it had large deposits of uranium and iron ores._

The initial landing went fine. Later on though, something set of one of our fuel stores. We were forced to use a gravity slingshot technique to break orbit, but unfortunately we picked the wrong nanosecond to do that.

Some kind of activity near the solar flares opened up a wormhole, and the gravity slingshot funneled our ships straight into it.

Now, wormhole travel is risky enough alone, but we had over a dozen ships. The result was that closing in that narrow, the vehicles where all smashed together and banged against each other like a carton of eggs in a hurricane.

As we felt our souls and minds start to fade, or bodies badly battered and air leaking out, something happened. Maybe it was the reality-twisting nature of the wormhole, maybe it was this particular region of space, but whatever it was we woke up like this," he said, indicating his lifeless carcass. 

"That's all? I was expecting something a little more, I dunno, exciting, light a giant robot attack or a space-necromancer."

The voidborne gave him a small condescending smile. "This is the real world kid. There aren't any alien death-bots or space-traveling spellcasters."

"This coming from an undead astronaut lecturing a green superhero," the other voidborne pointed out. "Quiet you."

"So...what do you guys do around here?" Beast Boy asked conversationally.  
"Mostly we watch Red Dwarf on DVD," the second one supplied.  
"Doesn't that get kind of boring after a while?"  
"Well, it would, but with the power of the void comes the ability to admit parts of it into our own minds, essentially erasing our memories as we please so we can enjoy the same thing over and over. We can even temporarily suppress memories, so we can compare watching the episodes in a certain order and see what's best the first or second time."  
"Cool," Beast Boy said with admiration.  
"Well, we can't eat, drink, taste, smell, breathe, or have sex, so there has to be some upside."

Starfire felt the colder-than-ice undead hands digging into her tender, yielding flesh, clutching tight with the iron grip of rigor mortis, she felt the frigid airless breath that, even in the absolute zero of space, gave her a chill. She turned around to meet the cold, black, dead eyes, and let loose a scream, then everything went black.  
When she came to, she was staring at the unfeeling figure. She looked like she was about 24 when she died. Her hair was faded to a pale grey, her skin was mostly chalk blue, with little purple lines where the sudden depressurization and temperature drop had cracked it. The jumpsuit was faded orange, covered with dust. They eyes were little portals, windows into a darker place, as if she was staring into the nethermost insanity in which the nuclear chaos that is Azathoth bubbles and blasphemed. It opened its mouth to speak, and as she heard the cold, otherworldly voice leave its mouth, she fainted again.  
"Oh, Jenny!" the undead creature screamed, and leapt towards Starfire and hugged her. Whatever she had been expecting, this wasn't it. She was wrapping her cold undead arms around Starfire in a protective embrace, crying frozen tears. "Um, excuse me Ms. enorboid, but I am not this 'Gen-ee' of whom you speak. Will you please let me go now?" she said, sweat-dropping, unsure whether to feel frightened or relieved. The undead girl seemed oblivious to her words and continued weeping and clutching her and lovingly stroking her hair. "Jenny...my daughter...I'm so sorry...I didn't mean to leave you, I had no other choice!"Robin awoke to find an horrible specter staring at him. He could not guess at the gender or age do to the bagginess of its jumpsuit combined with the fact that its face was severely smashed and bore more resemblance to an overcooked meatloaf than a human head. Despite this, it still managed to speak in a gurgling whisper that rattled around through his brain as if ignorant of the lack of air to carry its sound. It fluctuated and was periodically muffled by chunks of frozen blood and flaking tissue, so Robin could only catch fragments of it.

"I was once Jarold Rionel before...there was an accident...our ship got sucked into a wormhole...collision imminent, with...AAAAUGH!...quick, quick fate, but very painful, thought it...why? Why is there no...still here? I...no faith in...them all."  
Robin leapt to his feet and extended his pole. "Why did you knock me out?" the creature turned from its gurgling whisper to a more comprehensible but mechanical sounding voice. "I didn't. I startled you and you jumped, banged your head against the ceiling, and passed out."  
Robin sweat-dropped. As he stood feeling stupid, the thing hissed  
"I will kill you."  
"Why?" Robin asked, caught off guard by the rapid switch in tone.  
"So many years...alone, cold and dead...you shall suffer the same...pure spite."  
"Why didn't you just kill me when I was passed out?" Robin asked.  
"It is unsporting to strike a fallen opponent," it responded plainly.  
Robin took a moment to ponder the moral and ethical implication of not striking somebody when they were down, but still having no regrets about killing them out of spite and bitterness.  
"Besides, you must here my story...know my death, and feel your own..."  
Okay, it was simply then. The thing was completely, homicidally insane. That made things much simpler.  
"Die," it said in the softest whisper, almost like a lover's sweet nothing, before charging at him. As he readied his pole to strike the fiend, he over calculated and it slipped out of his fingers and started drifting out of his reach towards the infinite beyond.  
"Shitfuck," he said.

As the deranged deadform drudged towards him, Robin's mind worked frantically searching for a possibility. The horror drifted closer and closer, agonizingly slow yet somehow all too quickly for his liking. The moments it leaned in, its claws surging with the essence of cold merciless death itself were units of time in and of themselves, without any comparison or relevance to any other measure of time. The faceless stump gurgled and chunks of frozen blood began to drift from it, and his brain clearly losing all sense of priority became fixated on annoying one particularly icky-looking one. As he brushed the glob of frosted plasma aside his adrenaline charged-synapses reached a conclusion. He fumbled through his utility belt, struggling to access the one item just in time. He reached out a small vial and hurled it at the creature, causing him to spin backwards in the frictionless zero-G environment. As a result he caught the scene only in snatched. He saw the vial hurtling towards it. Then he saw the glass shards flying as the clear liquid seared through the dark flesh with a fiery glow like acid even as it crystallized, and then the same glow coming out of the cracks in the creature's flesh and the frozen liquid cutting through it like it was butter, and then an empty suit with some glops of rapidly evaporating purple goo.  
"I _knew_ that vial of holy water would be handy one of these days!"

Raven shuddered as she felt a ripple in the cosmos as another undead presence was destroyed. She tried to pin-point individual ones, but the area was so thick with void energy that it was impossible to tell where space ended and where the living dead began. It was like trying to find a turd in a fudge warehouse. She could only spot them when the positive energy backlash created a temporary hole in the void aura, which did her little good in finding them because they were already gone. She guessed that the two destructions she felt where caused by Terra and Robin, and hoped that they were victories rather than mere causalities in an insurmountable undead army. Still, Robin's presence was still there, although terra's was quite faint.  
"Dammit Corporal!" a voice said from nowhere. Raven focused with her second sight to see if she could detect any spectral images. What appeared to be a captain with a very weak undead aura was shouting at an underling. "This is all your fault! If you hadn't risked it with the gravity slingshot manuv-"  
"If I hadn't risked that we'd all be dead!"  
"We might have been rescued! We could have survived until they got a party down, or salvaged some impromptu fuel! You know what, I wish he had died! Anything's better than rocketing throw a space-time god knows what to god knows where or when!"  
Raven relaxed her third eye and sighed. They were ectoplasmic mirages, among the weakest of ghosts, little more than psychic impressions playing the same tension-filled scene over and over. As a result she failed to see the "corporal" melt into a pool of ectoplasm and ooze up her robe, soaking into her body. She suddenly felt a flash of emotion and her third eye was forced wide upon. She was angry at the captain for leading her into this mess. She was afraid of dying, of winding up hopelessly far away from home, of winding up in strange time, place, or even another universe. Wherever this thing was taking her she just didn't want to go. She-what the hell was she thinking? Where did this come from? How could such a minor spirit have possessed her, the daughter of a demon lord? She fought off the invading essence, focusing on who she was, what her memories were. As she was trying to concentrate, she felt a hand tapping her on the shoulder... 


	9. Chapter 9

**Road Trip Chapter 9**

Robin kicked off from the ship towards his favored weapon, his ever-important metal pole. He reached for it, stretching his arms to their limits, but it continued drifting away from him, just out of arms length. He finally got it as a cluster of gravel pushed it into his grasp and proceeded to chibify and embrace his nearly-lost weapon. "Are you okay?" Terra asked him. He was quickly brought down from his elation to a state of moderate humiliation before regaining his composure. "You won't believe what I just ran into," Robin said. "Undead psychopath with a jealous hatred for all that lives?" she replied automatically. He nodded. "Same here."  
He was about to ask if she still had her communicator when a static-filled message buzzed out over Terra's. "It's Raven...can't...ghosts and... OF MY HEAD!"

Raven slowly turned around to see who or what was tapping her shoulder. It was a hand. Attached to the hand, was an arm. The arm was seemingly attached to nothing, floating. She backed away from it and shuddered. The arm waved to her. Feeling somewhat unnerved and confused she waved back. It beckoned to her, and slowly she approached. It then flashed a very rude gesture, and Raven felt a twinge of anger. This changed to a slight surprise and alarm as it seemed to flicker with psychic energy and its fingers extended and narrowed to sharp, talon-like edges. It then slashed at her and sunk into her shoulder, tearing at her skin and ripping her cloak. Quickly she flew back and wrapped a nearby clump of old electric cord around the arm and secured it to a console, preventing it from reaching her. It pulled and grasped a few times, testing the chord's length, then mimed a punch. Raven was about to be confused when her thoughts were interrupted by the sensation of a small but hard blow to her gut. She took a moment to stare at the arm with her second sight, and mild fear was replaced with disbelief. _It's psychic? A psychic, undead, arm?! What the Azathoth is this?!_ she thought to herself. Again her train of reason was derailed by a blow, this time it was a small ship communicator pad thrown against her. She correctly guessed that the telekinetic limb was to blame, and fired a bolt of psionic energy at it. She felt the creature's own mental defenses resist and harmlessly deflect her attack. Frustrated she prepared a stronger, harder blast and  
_NO! TURN LEFT! BACK AWAY! WE'RE GOING TO AAAAAHHH!!!_ SMACK!  
A plate of metal siding was rudely slammed against her side, painfully bringing her back to reality. The psychic echo had reinstated itself while she was expending herself fighting the arm. She gave a crackle and groan of frustration. Whenever she tried to fend off one the other assaulted her, between the telekinetic blows and the introduced flashbacks she couldn't focus enough to deal with either. This was compounded by her frustration from struggling to overcome two pathetically minor threats working, intentionally or unintentionally, together against her.  
In her mindscape, anger fumed and smashed random floating formations while the spectral image of the long-gone crewmate spewed traumatic scenes from his eyes and mouth that entangled and dragged Raven whenever she tried to resist or ready her powers. A pale blue Raven was hyperventilating and screaming with horror while wrestling Raven's green-clad confidence. During a weak point, the screaming figure knocked the green clothed one with a hard knee to the chest and pinned her to the floor. At the same moment the true Raven briefly broke free of the onslaught of painful flashbacks and grabbed green's cloak. As the miasma of ghostly memories threatened to engulf her she yanked a yelling and struggling green out of the ring and clamped her jaws on her head, then proceeded to pull her into her mouth and swallow her whole.

Back on the physical plane Raven reached and grabbed her communicator. She spoke into it loudly hoping it would get through despite the heavy interference from the psychic struggle. "It's Raven, I'm over in the flagship, I can't use my powers, being distracted and attacked by minor ghosts and a psychic arm, please he-"  
She gasped and bent over as she heard the screams, the crunch of metal against metal compressed by a planar rift and felt a brief but intense pain as the rapid suction and force smashed her brains against the hull.  
"GET OUT OF MY HEAD!" she screamed in frustration and pain.

Terra smashed through the hull with a large rock and leapt in. Robin just used the open door. When they got in the scene that met them was this.  
A human arm wrapped in electrical chord wiggling its fingers, while Raven was stumbling around, screaming and moaning to pull out and that the ship was going to crash while reeling as if hit with a flurry of punches. They stared at the arm. Then they stared at Raven. Then they stared at the arm. Then they looked back at Raven again. She struggled an said weakly "kill arm" before falling to the floor. Robin took his staff, aimed, and with a loud whap complied with Raven's request and reduced the arm to grey powder. She then concentrated and dissipated the psychic echo with a surge of concentrated will and gave a relieved sigh.  
"Never...speak...of...this...again."

The three titans headed for the closest signal which happened to be Beast Boy's. Over the com system they heard thrashing and screams of agony. Not wasting any time, Terra smashed a hole in the wall(1) with a large rock, and then they all dove in and started wailing on the first thing they saw that didn't have a pulse. They had already inflicted some significant damage on the voidborne by the time they noticed Beast Boy yelling at them to stop and in some cases trying to physically restrain them. Robin, Raven, and Terra all turned around and began pointing and stammering. "But...you...and...torture...agony...screams and...thrashing..on...com?!"  
"Dude, I wasn't in pain, I was just doubled over with laughter! We were watching that one episode of Red Dwarf where they go to the other earth where time runs backwards, and Lister was saying "Not everything is great here, I mean, Santa Claus, what a bast-SMACK" Raven had whapped Beast Boy right between his 5th and 6th vertebra, causing him to stop blithering and regain focus. "So anyway, these guys aren't bad at all, they're just dead. Ya' know?"  
Robin shook his head, put his face in his hands and sighed. He then got up and went over to one of the voidborne. "You aren't an alien are you?"  
"No, I'm an unde-WHAM!" Robin gave him a hard blow to the skull that, where he still alive, would have proved extremely painful and possibly fatal. He then gave a little sigh or relief, grabbed the others, and left. 

(1)Something she had gotten really good at by now and learned to enjoy a bit 

The four heroes headed over to recover Starfire. This time they took a little more care, gently opening the door to find Starfire holding a weeping undead shade in her arms.  
"...and, I had so little money, and after John left me I had no idea what to do," the unliving woman sobbed out. "Take comfort Nthjork. I am sure that your 'Jenny' forgives you." She turned and looked at her perplexed companions.  
"I am sorry, but my friends have arrived and I must be leaving now. I shall be sure to letter you a right as soon as I reach a male box," she said, and a gentle tone. The woman sighed and waved her farewell, while the other Titans exchanged mildly unnerved glances.

At last the team ruinited in their space ship/mobile base. Cyborg turned to greet them. "So, where are the phase buffers?"

Robin fumbled in his belt, then stared for a moment. "DAMMIT!"

After salvaging some phase buffers(1), Cyborg took out the star chart to check points of reference and find out where they were. "Apparently the wormwhole took us to a largely uncharted spiral arm of the milky way galaxy. We're pretty off track, but we might still make it in time if we travel at double speed and don't make any pit stops(2)."   
"Right then," Robin said. "Set a course for Tamaran."

(1)It took three trips, but only because each time they found something else that distracted them and wound up forgetting what they had went to look for in the first place. The same thing often happened when grocery shopping.  
(2)Whenever they went on any lengthy journey Beast Boy would temporarily gain the bladder capacity of an incontinent 2 year old, and Terra would gain a powerful appetite rivaling that of Cthulhu. 


	10. Chapter 10

As they soared through space, Cyborg quietly stewed while he navigated. As usual, he had provided them with accurate, critical information on demand without so much as a "thanks".  
Oh sure, they were all friends and had saved on another's lives more than they could count, but that was always in battle. Cyborg made the security system that guarded them as they slept, the vehicles they used to move about, a good portion of the tower, as well as various other implements(1) and wonders of modern technology. Whether it was the formula for curvature in space nearing the opening of a class 3 white whole or the cheat codes for the third edition of _Dungeon Smashers_, Cyborg was the one to ask. In a way he liked it and felt important, but he also felt somewhat unappreciated, like a mental beast of burden.  
He really didn't want to even consider it, much less admit it, but on a whole he got along better with machines than people. The thing most dear to him was his car, which he felt and related to as if it was a person, indeed he could almost feel its eager revving and the playful way it shook as it turned and swerved. One quiet nights, when nobody else was awake, he thought he could here a subtle language in the gentle hum of his computer. It almost seemed like certain appliances had attitudes, like the way the microwave seemed to get bored with pizza and tended to over or undercook it, and appeared to add a tinge of flavor as a sign of thanks when presented with something unusual like mushroom turnovers for a change of pace. Maybe his partially cybernetic brain and body allowed him insight into a hidden world of digital sentience. Or maybe it was just the pull between man and machine was slowly wearing him down and driving him insane.

His deep musings where cut short by a violent jolt as the ship slammed into something. He was shocked and amazed to see that the entire vessel was being impeded by an enormous, detached, glowing white hand.

(1)Among them where several additions to Robin's utility belt, Beast Boy's unique suit that melded with his body whenever he changed shape so that he didn't find himself in a Fruit's Basket-esque humorous but highly embarrassing situation, and a six inch long vibrating object for Raven with some runes inscribed on it which he dared not mention or inquire as to the purpose of.


	11. Chapter 11

The hand wrapped over their space-ship. The ship went full-power, but no matter how it tried it could not overcome the solid resistance of the manual entity. It's fingers were clutched on the edges, so they couldn't manuver out from under it. They had no choice but to go wherever it directed them. It then unceremoniously shoved them down to the surface of the nearest planet.

As the titans emerged from their craft, they found themselves in a strange place. They were in a bare white room, with strong illumination coming from an indeterminable source. Their was an eerie, high-pitched music that sounded like a bizzare hybridization of the traditional scifi "weeeoooooweeeuuu" crossed with a pipe organ and a bit of electric keyboard thrown in for good measure.

"Greetings creatures of earth." said a somewhat lofty and dragging voice. While fairly soft, it still startled them. The turned around to find themselves looking at a strange group of creatures.

In front of them where two humanoid-looking organisms dressed in dark blue robes with white nightgown-like garments beneath them. They where white, not the peach color of anglo-saxons, or even the sickly white of somebody with little exposure to sunlight, but a true, chalky, clown-face-paint white. Their eyes were rimmed by grease-paint-like black markings. In their arms they held transparent open-faced containers, each with a small amount of blue liquid and what appeared to be a human brain.

"Starfire is not a 'creature of earth', and I'm not even from this plane of existence," Raven said to the bleached figures. The first one ignored her and continued talking.

"We are The Observers. We are as far advanced above you on the evolutionary scale as you are above the amoeba."

"I think I should feel insulted by that," Beast Boy said.  
"You're only 1/6th's correct," Raven quipped.

The second one then spoke up. "Obviously, the lesser beings mistake us for some of their own kind. We must demonstrate our god-like powers to convince the crude and simple-minded creatures."

The titans backed off slightly and gulped nervously, hoping this was not the destroy-you-in-a-rapid-but-excruciatingly-painful-way kind of power demonstration. Raven remained defiant and unimpressed, not expecting much. Beast Boy looked at them and frowned, thinking as hard as his addled cerebellum could manage. _Something about this is familiar..._

The observer turned and concentrated. There was a whirring noise followed by a pop, and in his hand was  
"A spoon?" said the titans incredulously, except for Raven, who just gave a small sigh and a smug grin.  
"Trifle not. We have not even begun to display the extent of our powers." The observer then focused again, emitted a whirling noise, and produced...a slightly larger spoon.

"Um, can you make anything other than spoons? Like a weapon?" Robin asked  
"Or a Shoggoth?" Starfire suggested  
"A car?" Cyborg supplied  
"Something not stupid?" Raven caustically continued  
Beast Boy was still deep in thought. "observers...spoons..."

"Very well. It seems your inferior minds are still incapable of comprehending the extent of our god-like powers. I shall manifest something from each of your memories in turn."

There was the classic whirling and pop, and Cyborg found himself staring up at a foot taller irish lad with a football jersey and a sadistic grin on his face.

deep at least by his mental standards

The Irish boy landed a hard punch to Cyborg's steel and Plexiglas stomach, which winded him and sent him to his knees despite the fact that he lacked a solar plexus. An energetic Irish jig tune kicked up and the boy proceeded to unmercifully wail on Cyborg. "Phinny Oneal, crack he wham was my sock high school jab nemesis...alwaysPUNCH could biff take me" he gasped out explanatorily as he was hammered by the light-footed heavy-fisted Phineaus.

In a rare moment of insight, Beast Boy yelled "Try thinking of somebody else!" Instantly Cyborg closed his eyes and focused as well as he could, given the circumstances. With another whirling and a pop the old rival was replaced by a woman who appeared to be Cyborg's mother. He had barely stood up and caught his breath to say "mom-" when the Irish tune resumed and his mother began beating the Pentium processor out of him. "This bam isn't BACKHAND working!" he cried out in agony. "Um, somebody really weak and small, liiiike...Gizmo!"  
Cyborg wasn't even capable of complaining as he was expending all of his energy trying to dodge Gizmo's mechanical leg-claws stabbing furiously at his one organic eye.  
"Um, Martha Stewart?"  
The inhuman home-decorator lunged at Cyborg thrashing her claws and letting loose an unearthly shriek that sounded like a cross between the scream of a radial saw being driven into metal that's just a little to dense for it and the wail of a dying man. The frail taught figure proved surprisingly lithe and strong and soon had him pinned to the floor. Fortunately Cyborg managed to knock off the demonic interior designer with his foot-blast and send her to a distance where he could aim his sonic blaster. To his surprise the hideous entity twisted around, rose to her feet, and pulled from holster-like items at her waist two objects, one apparently a spray-bottle and the other appeared to be some gun-shaped object of unclear function. She then aimed the spray bottle, shook, and with a sweeping motion blinded Cyborg with a cone of gold spray-paint. She then fired a glob of stuff onto the back of Cyborg's neck that caused him to scream with agony, and ran in and pinned him to the ground. This time she lept off again before he could fire his boot blast, but as he attempted to the rise he felt his skin hold him back. It was somehow affixed to the floor, as if by..."A hot glue gun! You sadistic, evil bitch!" Cyborg yelled at her. She simply gave a little hissing sound that might have been intended as laughter and crept towards her. Just as she was about to drive her claws deep through his eye socket into his brain her head snapped back as hit was hit with Cyborg's iron fist. She gave a howl of pain and staggered back, and with a horrid shivering convulsion snapped her neck back into place. She had just readied her hot glue gun when cyborg launched his arm affixed to a narrow but durable cord, latching on to Martha like a grappling hook and pulling her into close rang. He then raised his arm, but just before he could land the final blow she vanished with a loud pop. 

"As you can see from our omnipotent abilities, we could easily destroy you like insects if we so desired. However, we have another goal in mind."  
"And that would be?" Raven asked skeptically.  
"To observe you," the figure cryptically said.

The Observers both concentrated, and some of the white wall slid away to reveal a beautiful garden furnished with a small patio bearing new-age-style furniture. The Titans, dazed, wandered into it and the door slowly swished shut behind them. The first observer looked at the other and said, "Which one should we dissect first?" 


	12. Chapter 12

The titans stared at the flora. "There's roses, adowhites, bromiliads, a small sampling of nearly every plant on the earth, and some that aren't," Beast Boy said, closely examining them. The others took a moment to stare at him. "What? I read a few magazines on gardening and botany in my spare time." Starfire turned and looked at one of the flowers falling into the last category. "This plant looks...familiar," she said. She gave it an inquisitive sniff. "It's yaylowmuzk flower..." she said, probing little tentacles of thought back in time, searching through her memory for some important information relating to it. As she felt her eyes water, she remembered. "I'm allergic to yalowmuzk!"   
Everyone backed away several feet. Raven readied a shielding spell. But suprisingly there was no blast of green energy. She simply wiped her eyes a little with her now puffy hands. Come to think of it, her entire body was marked by a distinct swelling, and then with a loud stretching sound like that of an expanding balloon and a little "foof!" She swelled into a big round orange balloon with a skirt, top, head, hands, and feet.  
Starfire's companions stared blankly at her until a strong breeze kicked up and she began to drift away.

Thinking quickly, Raven telekinetically grabbed Starfire. Robin then fired a little lasso-type chord from his utility belt and expertly hooked it to Starfire's clothing, the end result being her suspension in a state similar to that of a helium balloon. Starfire a gave a little wimper as, not without some effort, she was pulled down to ground level and affixed there.

"Ice should ease the swelling," Raven said, examining the severely swollen Starfire. Robin got out a small vial of cryoreactive liquid and created a cold mist, that resulted in Starfire slowly deflating with a whining noise ending in a small burp. "Starfire, are you okay?" Robin asked. "Aside from a mild aching I am fine," she replied, as Robin plucked the flower with some tweezers and then stored it in a small vial in case it had some use or property potentially lucrative to Wayne Industries. The door swished open and the pale observers emerged.  
"It is time for you to undergo 'testing'"

The observer led them to a small room with six small desks. Suprisingly enough they were tailored close to each member's anatomical specifics so that they were close enough to fit body types ranging from terra's radically narrow form to cyborg's large bulky over 300 pounds of futureisticsoundingprefix-titanium alloy. They were just small enough and irregular enough to be extremely uncomfortable without actually hindering use. The observer focused and with a whirring and a pop there were in front of them each an SAT, a scantron answer sheet, and a number 1.5 pencil.  
"You will begin...now." the pale-faced entity stated, and they obeyed.

The sound of papers rustling and pencils scratching vibrated through the small room. Beast Boy gazed over and looked at Robin's answer sheet with all the subtlety of a dog sniffing a new-comer's crotch, drawing the attention of the omnipotent overseer. There was a whirring noise and a pop, and beast boy retracted his swollen hand as his wrist was smacked by a ruler-wielding elderly looking nun.

When they were done, the observer took the sheets and carefully tabulated the score.  
"Cyborg, you answered 67 correctly, Robin received 74, Terra did 48 correctly, Beast Boy...you wrote "I'm a fish" 356 times on the paper and then passed out...for a surprising score of 63, Raven got 81, and Starfire received 103 correct, due to the corrections of several errors in the test wording and an exceptional essay response."  
In order, Cyborg slumped his head and made a noise like a server crashing, Robin slammed his fist into the wall and bit his lip so hard it bled, Terra grinned sheepishly and shrugged, Beast Boy stared kinda blankly, Raven displayed a mona-lisa-esque smile that was invisible whenever you looked directly at it, and then all the Titans turned and gawked dumbfoundedly at Starfire.

"I take it I have performed adequately?" She said sweatdropping?

Being the advanced race that they are, several centuries ago the observers had discovered that the stray marks and unsuccessful erasings caused by #2 pencils accounted for all statistical anomalies and biases in the standardized testing system, and the use of a softer degree of lead made them a flawlessly accurate assessment of academic ability, raw intellect, and acquired knowledge.

The second observer walked in and said "It is time for the next test."  
"Aww, not another one," Beast Boy groaned clutching his head.  
"This is a test of team-work and group problem-solving abilities."  
"Alright, I'll go first!" Robin said, provoking a sweat-drop and a sigh from the others.  
"This is a test of your capacity to overcome challenges as a _group_," the observer said. "Either you all will complete it together or all of you shall fail."  
"So, what exactly does this test consist of?" Raven asked.  
"You must cross over the River of Moderate Danger to reach the Isle of Discomfort and defeat the Mostly Vigilant Guardian of Reasonable Power, then you must each ring the Gong of Unnecessarily Elaborate Names."  
"That doesn't sound so tough," Robin said, but was interrupted by a whirring noise and a pop to find each of them had a tall pitcher of water on their head. "You must also make it across without spilling a drop."  
"Okay, I've done a lot of martial arts training that focuses on dext-" there was another whirring and pop, and suddenly Beast Boy was crushed underneath a scantily clad, extremely fat woman eating fruit.  
"...and throughout it you must bear the weight of this rubensesque female taken from a renaissance era painting."  
At this point Robin decided just to keep his mouth shut.

A small green beetle squeezed its way out from under the rubensesque woman and resumed human form, then picked up its glass.

"So Robin, what's the plan?" Beast Boy asked.

"Yes," Starfire said, "I am eager to discover how you have conceived a solution to this obstacle."

Robin stood scratching his head. "Well..." the others moved in closer, inches away from his face, listening expectantly. 

"Maybe Raven could-" 

"No," she said cutting him off. "I don't have enough psychic power to levitate all of you, keep the glasses of water intact, and drag around this fruit-disposal appliance," she said poking her finger into the gargantuan girl's mass, causing half her body to jiggle. 

Robin then noticed that Terra's glass was empty. "Don't tell me you spilled it already," he said pleadingly.

"No, just, all this talking and thinking made me thirsty," she said, grinning sheepishly. Robin inhaled getting ready to scream at her, then freeze, flashed with the cartoon-lightbulb of sudden inspiration, then kissed her.

"Terra you're a genius!" he shouted. "Bwa?" said Terra, cocking her head and blinking while Beast Boy head-throbbed and fumed a bit. "If you the water's inside us, we won't have to worry about spilling it!" Robin announced excitedly. A few glugs later they turned to confront the next problem: the river.

Robin looked at Raven.

"No," she said before he even had a chance to speak. As Robin contemplated possibilities, his thoughts were interrupted by another one of Beast Boy's harebrained ideas

"...and then ride her to the island." Robin walked over to Beast Boy and thwacked him on the head.

"OW! All I was saying is we could use that plant thing to make Starfire puff up, and then ride her like a raft."

Robin sighed and rubbed his head. "That, is the most insane, stupid, halfas-BRILLIANT PLAN I'VE EVER HEARD!" he said.

As Beast Boy gave a sigh of relief and relaxed, Robin whacked him on the skull again.

"SHIT! What was that for?" Beast boy asked rubbing his throbbing temple. 

"I don't like you today," Robin said.

"Excuse me, did somebody mention my name? I think I was outing space," said Starfire, having missed out on the conversation.

Robin, Beast Boy, Raven, Cyborg, and Terra all turned and gave Starfire an evil grin. She sweatdropped a little and slowly backed up as they advanced on her. She slipped and raven telekinetically lifted her off her feet, Cyborg and octopus BB grabbed her, and terra put her hand over her mouth.

"I'm sorry about this Starfire, but we really need to get across. Now just relax and inhale deeply," Robin said as he put the flower up directly to her nose.

As she breathed in she briefly flushed pink. Then small rash spread till it covered her body, which was replaced by a slight swollen appearance, and then her entire body began to loudly expand. At first her stomach swelled up, then hear midsection and bottom in expanding orbs until she was 7ft wide, at which point the distinction was lost, her entire shape rapidly expanding into a massive orb. When she had become a 24 feet diameter wide sphere with hands, feet, and a head, the growth stopped and she gave a little sigh.

Robin ran over to her head. "Are you alright Starfire?" he said, concerned and a little guilty.

"I feel somewhat 'gassy' and a little odd, but I believe I am physically unharmed," she said forgivingly.

He then heard Beast Boy call out "All aboard the SS Starfire!" before shapeshifting into a gigantic squid and pulling her into the shallows of the water. As the companions hopped on beast boy held them in place with his two longest tentacles acting as a kind of safety belt, the suction cups easily affixing to Starfire's smooth surface. He gave a gentle push with his mantle and they were off on their way. 

Slowly the makeshift craft drifted along the river, propelled by giant squid Beast Boy's jets of water and undulations of his mantle, as well as the occasional starblast from Starfire. Whenever they got stuck Raven helped get them on track with a telekinetic nudge. As the arrived at the island, Robin easily hoisted the almost as light as air Starfire, tossed her up a few times and poked her bouncy rubbery body in a momentary flicker of childishness, then set her down and using several cryo-blasts gradually shrunk her to normal. As they got up they looked around with a sense of accomplishment and sighed.  
"Isn't it wonderful? Just listen to the flowing and crashing of that river, now conquered, it's meaningless trickle and-"

He then noticed that Beast Boy was clutching at his crotch and shifting from foot to foot. "Why did you have to talk about the river?" he said moaning in exasperation. 

"What is wrong friend beast boy?" Starfire asked. 

"I GOTTA PEE!"

"Hold it," Robin said unsympathetically.

"But I reeeeally gotta goooo!" he whined, clutching himself and shifting his feet in the frenzied child-like motion informally referred to as the I-have-to-pee dance. Robin pulled his face up till it was two inches away from Beast Boy and said through gritted teeth

"Hold it or I will." 

Beast Boy shut up very quickly.

"Wasn't their supposed to be some other threat here?" Cyborg asked. 

"Thp, Yesss," said the 6ft tall man-lizard standing next to him.

"Alright, just che-" he froze, turned around, grabbed the reptilian's head, examined it, then his eyes bulged out and he lept into the air, screamed like a 5 year old girl, and ran. 

"There's a L-, a L-, a l-l-l" he said to Robin pointing and jabbering confuzedly. "A lion?" he asked.

"No, a L-, a L-L-L-" 

"A lycanthrope?" Beast Boy suggested. 

"A L-L-" 

"LIZARD!" all the Titans shouted pointing at the hideous figure behind him. 

"Yes, that's it," Cyborg said. He then paused, slowly rotated his head around 180 degrees, and sweat-dropped.

"Dammit, STOP DOING THAT!" He screamed at the lizard-like-thing before backing away. 

The creature turned examining them with it's compound eyes, flicking its tongue, hissing, sucking on its saliva, and blathering as it did so.

"Dooo not worrry. I am th-thp the neeear eternal-thp grgle guardian of this island. Loo-slurp-looook around you thp, there are before -gargle- yooouu the tools and materials-slurp you neeeed to defeeat me," it said, indicating the sharp rocks, diamonds, flint, stone, sulphur, nitro-glycerin, and coal deposits. 

Beast Boy raised his hand and jumped around a little. 

"Slpht-yesssssss?" the guardian asked.

"Do we _have_ to use them to defeat you? I mean like, if we aren't sure how to use the stuff on the island can we just beat you up the normal way."

"Welll, I sssth-sssuppposssee soooo," it said, pondering the question. 

"Okay," Beast Boy said as he transformed into a Tyrranosaurus Rex. With a 270 degree turn and a thwack of his tail he proceeeded send the guardian flying off before it hit the river with a loud splash.

"Well...that was simple," Raven said a little dumbfoundedly.

"GONGS! RING! HURRY!" Beast Boy shouted, knocking all his chibi companions over. He then procceeded to go gorilla and grab the fat woman, still eating fruit, and ran over to the gongs at the other end of the island.

The other titans had barely recollected their wits by the time they reached there.

"HURRY!" he shouted. By the time Cyborg reached there Beast Boy apparently decided that they were going too slow, grabbed him by the foot, lifted him up, swing him around three times, and then released him so that he went flying and slammed against his corresponding gong causing it to reverberate.

"WE'RE DO-ONE!" the green changeling called out.

The observers manifested with their trademark whirling pop. "Congradulations, you ha-" 

Beast Boy interrupted them. "Since the test is over, can we spill the water now?" 

"Yes-" the observer began 

"Good," he said, and ran quickly to a nearby bush. He unzipped and quivered and sighed with relief. After his task was done and he turned around to return, he caught sight of Terra and Raven, who had somehow forgotten to turn away. Terra was trying to look innocent and Raven was staring at him with a somewhat worrying intense expression. He blushed himself to the upper end of the infrared wavelength and then fainted. 


	13. Chapter 13

The Titans next found themselves in a small structure resembling a Roman coliseum.

"This test shall be a test of combat skill and brute strength. Those of you unarmed shall be armed with the traditional weapons of our people." The observer began handing weapons out.

"Cyborg, you shall recieve the silver warspoon. It is primitive, but lethally effective in its simplicity."

"Terra, you shall recieve the double-bladed Krishna-tah. Its four peircing, lacerating, bludgeoning, and chronospacial ends allow it to stab organs, cut flesh, break bones, and prepare italian cuisine all in a single swipe."

"Raven, you shall recieve the mace of sharpness. This dual weapon consists of a heavy mace with a dagger attached to it through the use of scotch brand adhesive tape."

"Starfire, you shall recieve the kai-oehm targeter, since you are the only one we can entrust with such a powerful weapon bearing the ability to influence timeflow and caustic phase vibrations."

"And Beast Boy, you shall recieve the sea snail. This small aquatic mollusk lives in the ocean and feeds on algea deposits."

"So, what do we have to fight?" Robin asked drawing his pole in one arm and his birdarang with another. 

"Each other," the observer stated matter-of-factly.

"You mean a practice-fight or tournament, right?" Robin said suspiciously. 

"Yes, that description would be accurate, except that instead of being disqualified or knocked out, you are killed by your opponent." 

"Why don't we fight **you**?" Terra asked bellicosely. 

The observers shook their heads and sighed. "We are so advanced as to provide no chance of your survival. Besides, we observers have evolved beyond petty concepts such as war, and kill only out of spite."

"How pacifistic of you," Raven said sarcastically.

"Well, what if we don't want to fight to the death?" Cyborg asked defiantly. 

"**You... have... no... choice!**" the observer's both said at once in a commanding tone. The closed their eyes and the whirring began as they exerted their colossus will over the mortal minds of the Titans.

After an awkward silence of the observers grunting with exertion and whirring, Terra turned and asked, "what are they doing?"

"I think they're trying to control our brains and bind us to their will," Robin said.  
There was another pause.

"Is it working?" she asked, tilting her head and giving weirded out stares at the pale robed figures.

"Um, well, it won't affect Cyborg because of his half-robot brain, Raven's psychic powers probably provide a barrier, Starfire...seems to be unaffected(1). I'm getting a mild buzz in my head and a newfound appreciation of Yoko Ono but aside from that I'm fine. What about you?"

"Well, I've got a slight compulsion to disembowel all of you and feast on your hearts and livers to make me stronger, but it's surpassed by my desire to twirl my hair and wonder where they get the coloring agent that makes lime-flavored jello look green(2)" she responded. She then gave a joking nudge to her boyfriend.

"How about you BB? Holding out okay?"

Beast Boy's eyes had narrowed and where completely white. His jaw hung slack, his arms stretched forward.

"MUST...KILL...LINCOLN!"

(1)Robin was still kind of loathe to admit that anybody, even somebody he loved, was extremely smarter than him, especially somebody who tried to attack the toaster and had an animated, half-hour long discussion with an empty cloak before she realized her error.  
(2) it's one of the first substances that are boiled off crude oil in the refining process. 


	14. Chapter 14

As his muscles relaxed, the sea snail fell from his hands. He turned 180 degrees and faced his friends. He rolled back his head and made a gurgling sound, then began to grow and twist, and the titans, sans one, found themselves facing an adult male Tyrannosaurus, its powerful jaws dripping steaming saliva as it gazed upon them.

"Um, I don't suppose some sappy speech about us being your friends and free will would snap you out of this, would it?" Terra asked hopefully and sweat-dropping in mounting anxiety.  
The Green T. Rex shook its head.  
Starfire made a farting noise with her hands against her face in hopes of restoring his conscious thought with humor. The green dinosaur snorted a little, but it didn't stop grinning at them with a combination of condescension, predatory anticipation, and moronic glee that only a massive therapod from the cretaceous era could pull off.

"Crap," Raven said speaking for the party of five.

Beast Boy lunged forward, his jaws vivisecting the air molecules where Robin had been moments ago. Without even looking behind him he knocked Robin prone with his tail and in the same fluid motion came around to knock Raven out of the air with his forehead. Just as Terra was rising out of reach he inhaled deeply and let forth a tremendous roar that jarred her physically and mentally, the combination of concentration loss and the sonic shockwave knocking her off and sending her crashing to land with an unhealthy sounding crack on the dusty ground. He then focused his attention on Cyborg and snagged him with a swift chomping motion, not pausing as he lifted him up, let him drop from just the right height to pin and injure Robin as he was getting up but not high enough to Cyborg to reorient himself or aim his sonic blaster. He then lifted up the both of them, legs wedged in between his teeth, dragged his head close to the amphitheater, and began a 360 degree turn resulting in them smacking against every single supporting column within range, although Cyborg absorbed the brunt of the blows. Just as his spin of spinal striking was nearing an end, he gave a bellow of pain and dropped the do-gooder duo as he was struck by a searing starbolt.

"Let them GO!" Starfire yelled from the heights above, safely out of range of the deadly jaws. He immediately reacted to this new threat, transforming into a large pterosaur and heading up towards her. She waited patiently, bracing herself, and then simply chomped on the winged reptile's short neck, maintaining a gentle but firm grip so as to suppress air flow and hinder movement without actually asphyxiating. She said something muffled by the adversary currently locked in her mouth, but fortunately the person it was directed at understood it well enough. "We have to stop the source. If we can find a way to take out the observers, Beast Boy will stop."   
Terra, angry, many of her bones fractured or broken(1), her pain-stricken and blunt trauma-addled brain struggling to react, heard a name to direct her aggression at and focused on it. She stumbled over to the concentrating observers, weakly aimed a slurred obscenity at them, slapped them, and passed out. 

(1)including the ones that had just finished healing from Starfire's most recent "hug" 

The two "omnipotent" beings clutched their faces in pain and began to cry like 5 year old girls. In doing so they dropped their brains, causing the fluids to splash and resulting in them rolling a little and landing half upside-down, the frontal lobes pressing painfully against cold hard earth. This furthered the damage, agony, and loses of focus, to the point where even beast boy recovered and was free of the alien influence. He quickly changed back to his human form and convinced Starfire to release him. They then turned to the observers who were sniffling and trying to clean up their brains. The first one hastily announced "We have decided that you are too primitive and barbaric to continue observing. Perhaps your race will someday advance to become like ours, yaddah yaddah, crap about your potential, LEAVE!"

"We need our ship." Robin said, stepping on the observer's hand as he reached for his brain. This elicited a scream and a whimper. "It's been here all along."  
"You mean like, this whole place is an illusion you created with your minds?" Beast Boy asked.  
"No, I mean it's been here all along! It's right outside that open door you troglodytes!" he said in a combination of anger and fear, pointing at it.  
As they headed back to their noble vessel, they started talking about the events. "So, you don't remember anything?" Robin asked.   
"Dude, I remember all of it! That's the fourth time you've asked me!"   
"I still can't believe I almost got eaten by a vegetarian!" Cyborg exclaimed.  
"Hey, I wasn't gonna **eat** you, I was just going to smash your spinal chord repeatedly against the wall, throw you to the ground at a high speed, lacerate your major veins with my fangs, whack you against a wall with my tail as you bounced from the blow, then step on you, tear out your left kidney with my dexterous but powerful foreleg, and then mash you to a bloody, smoldering pulp," Beast Boy explained with mounting annoyance.  
Everybody stared at him for a little bit.  
"What?"


	15. Chapter 15

The titans had barely left the solar system when the discovered another vessel in their sights. The sleek black and green ship was covered in sharp angles and tapered ends and spiny protrusions, creating the visual impression of some enormous poisonous insect streaking through space. It seemed to be taking a course directly for them. They swerved left to avoid, but it followed suit. Any evasive action they took was mimicked by it, still streaking forward. As they put up shields set to brace for an impact, they where surprised to see the ship suddenly move upward (downwards for them since it was upside-down in relation to their vessel), and deploy a docking whip that held them fast and forced their landing in the chasm of this unknown vessel.

As the doors swished upon, a horrifying creature stepped in. It was scarcely 3 feet tall, although this was partially do to the fact that the creature was hunched forward position. It had a shiny, angular, black carapace covering its entire body with streaks of soft purple and teal. It was vaguely centaur-like in build, with a quadrapedal base body and a two-armed torso. The thing's head was a wedge-like beak in the front that opened horizontally mounted with two sets of glowing red eyes, the back of the head branching into three spiny structures that created the impression of a crown. Wasting no time, Robin grabbed his staff, and began running forward at full speed. His weapon swished inches short of the bewildered and panicked insectoid as he was cut short by a firm yank on his cape and fell flat on his back, winded and prone. Starfire released her grasp and gave a scream of delight, wrapping the extraplanetary arthropod in a friendly embrace. "It so wonderful to so see you again!" she said(1). "I apologize for my friend's actions, he is a little...mistrustful of those not from his planet of origin."

Robin groaned.

"It's okay, xenobiophobia is a common affliction" the bug creature said dismissing Robin's actions with a wave of its pincer, "But no doubt you are hungry and fatigued. Let us talk over a good filling meal."

__________________________________

(1)After shouting the Tamaranian equivalent of "What-up bitch?"

_______________________________

The alien was joined by two others of more bluish hues, lighter color, and slightly smaller build.

"So, do you have any special dietary concerns?" the insectoid inquired.

"I'm a vegan," Beast Boy said with a mix of pride and defensiveness. She called to the smaller two

"One Metalunan fighting plant for the skinny green Vulcan! Usual for the others."

The creature's compatriots nodded, and in a blurry of movement and a whiff of hot air, there sat before then each a high plate of food. The meal for most of them consisted of some kind of red meat chopped into thin strips, slathered in sauces. It had the shape and color of warmed-over dog food, but smelled delicious. Beast boy eyed his dish curiously. It had a stout trunk with three tentacle-like vine protrusions. It was dark green in color and dripped something sticky and orange. Curiously he poked it with a fork, and to his suprise it poked him right back with one of its vine-growths. He gave it another jab, and it unleashed an angry roar that sounded a lot like a Scottish berserker, grabbed his head, and slammed him against the table.

While Beast Boy wrestled with his entree, Starfire began to talk with her friend. "So Starfire, what brings you to this part of the galaxy?"

"I am heading home to attend the Nigguroth-Cthugan festival."

"Truly wonderful, but I fear you will never make it on time unaided. I know a few advantageous natural spatial curvatures and fixed wormholes that will help you reach your goal. It will still take a while, enough time for some meals and chat."

"Glorious. How are you and your husbands?"

"Oh, doing quite well. I was thinking about getting a third, but not until we get our first clutch of chlidren."

"Wait, husbands? Plural?" said a suprised Robin.

"Yes. Due to the disproportionately large number of males, and the breeding habits inherited from our more primitive ancestors, the practice of polyandry is quite common among my species."

As Starfire questioned about current events, Robin probed into their culture and Cyborg their technology, Raven brooded on her inner thoughts, Terra and Beast Boy were focused on the food. The fighting plant had the upper hand, but while he was pinned in a half-nelson and bleeding from his left ear but showed no outward signs of giving up.

"Mrgphrple!" Terra exclaimedsomewhere in the middle of her 17th course, spewing chunks of partially chewed meat across the table and onto a less than pleased Raven. She blew the saliva-covered meal with a small gust of telekinetic energy. She considered hurling a retaliatory utensil at her, but doubted she would even notice. It was at this point Beast Boy hit a major success with a suprise snatch and a bite at the base. With a judo-like toss he overthrew it, slammed it repeatedly, then feasted with the taste of victory.

"I think what our friend here was trying say was that the food is delicious."

"Yeah, it's the best thing I've had in days!" Cyborg said enthusiastically.

"It's interesting, kind of bitter on the edges, but it tastes strangely familiar," Robin commented thoughtfully.

"Well, it comes from planet earth. Quite common I believe" their invertebrate host said.

"Pig? Cow? Chicken?"

"No, I forget what it is. There's a big overpopulation problem with them, and something about them overfeeding."

"Deers maybe?"

"No, what was it, ah, now I remember. Under the local taxonomy its called Homo Sapien."

Beast Boy's "The Child's Book of Rainy-Day Ipecacs" was a great help to the other Titans. After some hasty goodbyes and extensive purging, Starfire informed them that they were within orbit of Tameran. Cyborg put the key in the ignition, and was met with a loud whining noise. He tried again and again, with mounting frustration. "It's flooded," he said with a groan. "Starfire, get out and push."


	16. Chapter 16

Using her alien strength and the relatively low gravitational pull, Starfire shoved the massive transport device out and pushed it for a while until the kinetic surge gave the propulsion system the boost it needed to start off. Cyborg skillfully manipulated the craft, slowing it down just enough to make a graceful landing. As the outer hatch lifted they all got out and surveyed the terrain. Aside from some neon flowers and dull black copses of vegetation, the stark rocky landscape brought to mind Nevada or an imagined background in a Calvin and Hobbes cartoon. As Robin took in these details, he couldn't help but feel something was missing.

Starfire, momentarily blinded by the engine flare, looked around for the vessel of her companions. "Hello? Robin? Beast Boy? Raven? Where have you gone?"

16th CHAPTER INTERMISSION

(Please take this opportunity to visit the lobby and sample a wide selection of refreshments. And by "lobby", I mean "your kitchen", and by "a wide selection of refreshments" I mean leftover frozen pizza.)


	17. Chapter 17

After following the energy trail left by the ship with her wide-spectrum Tamaranian eyes, Starfire began surveying Tamaran's vast valleys and plains in search of her companions. She soon found the vessel standing out with it streaks of blue and dayglow green in the dusty orange Tamaranian landscape. As she flew in for a close look, Starfire noticed the tracks and the direction they were heading. She shuddered as a grim premonition crossed her mind, and she soared onward with a renewed sense of determination, urgency, and worry, praying that her suspicion would prove untrue.

"Water...water..." Beast Boy said in a weak, raspy voice as he crawled, dragging his frail body in the orange sand. "water, wat-OW!" he winced as Robin thwapped him on the head.

"Spare me the melodrama, we've only been walking for half an hour and you had a drink five minutes ago." Beast Boy rubbed his head and muttered. Cyborg swished his fingers back and forth rhythmically, mouthing rap lyrics(1)as he listened with his build-it headphones. Terra, her mind plagued by boredom and hunger, was visualizing Robin, Cyborg, Beast Boy, and Raven as various food items(2) to pass the time. Raven appeared to be simply floating along and staring into the distance, but was in fact listening to the unabridged book-on-tape of [u]Sabriel[/u] via a walkman and headphone concealed in her hood.

"Hey, what's that?" Terra asked, pointing to a massive field filled with striped orange and brown roundish objects, roughly 20ft ahead of her.

"How did I not see that before?" Robin wondered aloud.

Raven floated over to what appeared to be a large sign written in foreign characters. "Starfire, do you think you can translate this?" she asked. She turned around.. "Starfire?"

Robin slapped his head and swore. "I knew I forgot something."

"What are these things?" Terra asked nobody in particular.

"They look like...eggs," Cyborg speculated, closely examining and weighing one.

Beast Boy picked up another and gently rubbed it. "Aww, I bet there's a cute little space alien inside!"

"Don't touch them," Robin barked, "they might be dangerous!"

"Come on!" Beast Boy complained. "How can a baby be dangerous?"

As if to answer his question, the egg cracked. A hideous, orange, sticky, insectoid creature reared out with a convulsive shudder and a birth scream, then sunk its serrated jaws into his hand.

Beast Boy screamed in pain as the fierce and hungry mandibles sliced through his flesh and severed his entire hand. He tossed it away from him before it could lock its Ravenous maw on more. The blood gushing from his ruptured artery rained in a crimson arc upon the other eggs. This set off a chain reaction, and the whole nest began to hatch and crawl forth in search of prey. Robin smacked at them with his weapons while Terra aimed rocks, but the little monstrosities were tiny, agile, and filled with a cockroach-like enduring vitality. Cyborg found himself unable to even keep his aim on one long enough to finish charging his sonic cannon. By the time Beast Boy finally managed to change into another form to heal his injury, he was overcome with a swarm of the arduous arthropods. Raven tried to fly above and rain destruction on them, but the creatures had an amazing leaping ability and she was unable to regain focus with at least one of them biting her every few seconds.

Worse yet, whenever one of the creatures met its mark, some scrap of skin or trickle of blood was released. Each hint of prey summoned new combatants from their shells. The titans were soon engulfed in a tide of crawling horrors.

Starfire soared towards them. Her face was contorted with anguish and panic as she hastily mumbled a prayer to her goddess and worked to come up with a plan in the few seconds she had.

The first thing Starfire did was inhale deeply and let out a supersonic scream that caused the orange assailants to writhe and flee. Robin turned happily to greet her

"Starf-"

She roughly grabbed him by his cape, not even slowing down as she curved to pick up Terra.

"I'mverysorrybutthereismuchdangernotimetoexplain!" She then opened her mouth to an impossible size and scarfed them both in a single gulp. Without a moment's hesitation she swallowed Raven, and then with some difficulty wolfed down Cyborg. Starfire was bloated and dizzy.

Beast Boy enough time to yell "not again!" before he was crammed down her gullet. The Tamaranian Princess leaned against her massive stomach, gave an earth-shaking belch, and lay there catching her breath.

"What just happened?" Terra groggily asked, "and this sausage tastes horrible."

"I'll tell you what happened, Starfire ate me [i]again[/i]!" Beast Boy complained.

"We all got eaten, and that's not a sausage, it's my foot!" Robin said grumpily.

"Oh, well for a foot it doesn't taste half bad," Terra said gnawing it experimentally, causing Robin to headthrob with annoyance.

Cyborg extended his small flashlight attachment to discover what seemed to be writing on the stomach wall. "Mumbo Jumbo wuz here?" he read allowed, staring at the text following the top hat and eye mask wearing killroy.

Raven groaned. "I can't wait to hear the explanation for this."

"Hey, I think we're moving," Beast Boy said, and then their living container began to cumbrously walk, hover and roll. By the time this irregular course of movement stopped they were all extremely nauseous.

After passing a safe distance from the swarm, Starfire gave a little coughing that developed into a loud "Hornk!" and hacked up Robin, spitting him upon the ground. She barfed up Terra and Beast Boy, un-ate Raven, and spewed forth Cyborg. All of them were sticky, but none the worse for wear. Despite the frantic questioning, Starfire took some time to pant and recover from her gastronomic feat.

Starfire held up her hands and took a deep breath. She embarced a lecture-style explanation, temporarily adopting a professor hat and standing in front of a chalkboard with a picture of one of the creatures on it.

"I needed a quick way to save you from the Tamaranian larva, so,"

"Wait, what kind of larva?" Beast Boy asked.

"Tamaranian."

"I know they're here on Tamaran, but what do they grow into?"

"Tamaranians."

"Yes but what kind of creature?" Beast Boy repeated.

Starfire sweatdropped. "I see I shall have to back up a little."

She erased the current image and sketched up a little thing with a crude drawing of an egg, an arrow leading to the creature, then to an oval-thing.

"All Tamaranians, such as myself, begin life as an egg. In infancy we hatch forth as nearly mindless, omnivorous larva, with no goal in life but to eat and grow. Because the latter is dependant on the former, larval forms will consume everything in sight. To prevent all her young from simply devouring each other or turning on their parents, the mother of the universe endowed us with a kind of pheromone system that prevents larva from identifying any other species member, regardless of growth stage, as food. Once they eat enough and reach sufficient size, the larva enter a pupa-like state in which they remain until wakened by the touch of a grown Tamaranian. This is another ingenious inborn device that prevents any Tamaranian from entering life alone and orphaned. We hatch from the pupa at the equivalent of the earth age of 5 or 6, with some first spark of sentient thought created from the experiences gleened as a larva and a small amount of psychic impression created by the awakeners touch."

She added a picture of a five-year old Starfire to the chalk board with the footnote "I was so cute ".

"From then on, we grow in size and mental age until we reach transformation", picture of a Tamaranian with a tentacle, crystalis, eye beams, and question mark, "and royal Tamaranians continue for a while until the third puberty, or 'growth spurt' as you humans would call it", picture of a fat stick figure Tamaranian wolfing down a huge amount of food. :"From there on, barring a few megaloid throwbacks caused by inbreeding in the royal line, the Tamaranian increases little in size throughout adulthood."

"Okay, but WHY DID YOU HAVE TO EAT US?" Cyborg asked impatiently.

"Please, have patience. I am just reaching that part of the explanation," she reproached.

"As I previously mentioned, while the specially tuned olfactory sense keeps the larva from attacking they're own kind, this protection unfortunately does not extend to other forms of sentient life," she said, motioning to a diagram labeled "through a larva's eyes" The diagram showed a Tamaranian stick figure with a yucky-face above it, and a crude drawing of robin with an apple in his mouth and a three-eyed smiley face licking its lips. "You seemed to be losing the fight, so I had to make a quick decision before you killed and/or were killed by the larva. When I swallowed you, this safe contained your non-Tamaranian scents and bleeding wounds within my body. I retreated as quickly as I could and regurgitated you before my digestive acids could inflict any harm."

"Well, that was...informative." Robin said, blinking.

There was a brief, awkward pause.

"Alright then, let's go. Lead the way Starfire."

Starfire looked up and took a glance at the sun.

"Oh dear. We must hurry, lest we miss the opening rites and accompanying feast." At the word "feast" Cyborg and Terra were frozen with a sudden look of urgency. Responding to the situation, Beast Boy transformed himself into a large green horse. Terra eagerly leapt on, grabbing his mane and eliciting a blush from him. He was a little less happy when Cyborg hopped on and his spine snapped like a twig. He spent a few minutes whimpering in agony before changing back to human form to repair the damage. He gave his mechanical friend a searing glare.

"Can we please go for one frelling minute without me being struck on the head, mutilated, eaten, or otherwise physically assaulted?" he shouted to the general surroundings. At that point Starfire sneezed and sent a small blast of green energy searing through his right leg.

"Was that longer than one of your earth-minutes?" Starfire asked hopefully. Beast Boy simply gave a little pitiful combination sigh and moan.

"Alright. This time no five-hundred pound half-robots on the beast-stallion," he said, and shifted to his horse shape. Terra, Raven, and Starfire all sat down, but when Robin moved to get on he received a light kick in the head and an angry neigh. Beast Boy galloped into the alien sunset, leaving Cyborg and the Boy Wonder in trail of dust.

The green stallion was signaled by Starfire to halt when they reached a large amphitheater-like structure. As the girls dismounted, Beast Boy couldn't help but think that Terra seemed to have gotten a little heavier(3). A group of armed guards made a way for Starfire and her companions, and took them to a front seat near the monarch of Tamaran, to whom Starfire had relinquished her newly acquired position of hereditary ruler on her last visit to the planet. He listened with intrigue and amazement as Starfire recounted the story of her newly introduced friend Terra(4). He stared questioningly at Starfire and then suspiciously at Terra, as if expecting her to fall apart or take her head off, but eventually smiled and gave her a hearty tarsal-fracturing handshake.

"I see a strong grip runs in the family" Terra said as she retracted her crumpled hand and briefly shook it to get the bone shards to line up again.

"Actually, he is not my birth-father. Like most Tamaranians I was adopted as a pupa," Starfire explained cheerily. She then gave a silencing motion indicating that the event was about to begin.

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(1)He was mouthing rap lyrics, but he was actually listening to an old broadcast of Prarie Home Companion's "The Lives of the Cowboys." Cyborg had an irrational fear that other people would lose respect for him if they knew he listened to public radio.

(2)licorice, sirloin steak, celery, and devil's foodcake, respectively

(3)Come on, even with her super-human metabolism, she has to have gained a little weight over all this time with her eating habits.

(4)her exact words were in Tamaranian, but the translation was "This is my friend Terra. We met her in a dessert, but later she thought she had been betrayed and left, then came back but it turned out she was really serving Slade and sold us out to him which made Beast Boy break up with her so she became Slade's new apprentice and callously tried to murder us and took over the rest of the city but then she had second thoughts when she found out we weren't dead and Slade got angry at her for running away so he took over her mind but she got free and in a final act saved the city but got turned to stone and sorta died, although it was okay because later she came back to life but she was a flesh-eating undead monster but Raven used a spell to fully restore her back to the real live girl she is today."

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	18. Chapter 18

Two groups of Tamaranians floated in from opposite sides of the stage, one dressed in yellow and red robes and another with brown and green robes. Some armed Tamaranians lead in a massive, snake-like creature with numerous legs. The thing crackled with electricity and had a sedate, pacified look in its eyes, as though hypnotized or drugged. The attendants then strapped the creature to a large platform with strange bands of a glowing, bluish-green material. Then each of the robed figures took handful of some substance, grain, berries, or strange powder, and threw it upon the beast.

The robed figures then began a lyrical chanting, first the ones in brown in a deep, resonating tone, quickly joined by the red and yellow robed celebrants using a high, passionated tone. The two waves of sound merged and overlapped, creating an eerie, unearthly sound, which the listeners felt in their blood, their bones, and their soul. Even without speaking the language, a listener could discern some primally connected meaning. Those in the brown and green robes spoke of the ground, of the forests, of things that grew, spread, and crawled, of all manner of living creatures both perfected and deformed, beautiful and terrible, of the beginning of life itself. Those in the red and yellow robes sang of the sun and the light and the fire, of the spring sun that gives life making crops grow and warming the planet, of desert suns merciless and harsh cracking and blistering life and hope, of the blazing fires to warm and cook, to forge and melt, of the green energy made from the powers of the sunlight and of the elemental fusion within the center of the star itself. Both of them spoke of strange dogmas, of myth and legend, of powerful creatures from before the dawn of the world we know, of terrible things that dwelt and in the depths of planets, and the far reaches beyond the stars, and colossal intelligences, unknowable and mighty, alien to our own.

The Tamaranians were transfixed true worship and adoration, Beast Boy and Terra simply gazed on stupefied, but Raven could feel this was not merely some cultural relic but a True Ritual. There was power in those songs, and they spoke of things which she had read of in cryptic and ancient tomes.

The robed figures then all turned and lined up each at a segment of the massive creature, and withdrew a weapon like the one Starfire had received. They all raised it high, and struck it downwards with a practiced hand. Raven blinked, Terra winced, and Beast Boy stared frozen with horror, his jaw dropping. It readily became apparent that this was not a butchering, but a ritualistic sacrifice. The weapons carved intricate symbols and removed throbbing organs from the still living creature, howling and writhing in pain. The leader of each group of robed figures took out a single, identical, heart-like organ, extended it upwards, muttered some incantation, and the organs vanished with a flash of light. Then they each removed another and each spoke a different spell.

Down from the sky flew a tiny star, a fist-sized mote of living flame. The red and yellow robed celebrants turned and bowed to the globule of fire, and gave it a still-pulsating organ which it eagerly consumed, leaving only a fine patch of white ash. The green and brown robed ones removed a similar part and turned to the edge of the nearby forest. As they looked onward, some of the trees began to bend and sway. It soon became apparent that they were not trees, but the grasping members of some towering creature. It lumbered over to the side of the amphitheater, where one of the green-brown robe wearers flew up to it and offered it the piece of flesh. It grasped the part with one of its massive appendages and consumed it with some unseen orifice. The figures then each carved out a small portion of the purple sacrifice for themselves, threw back their hoods, and with smiling faces cheered some Tamaranian phrase, and began hurling chunks of the violet flesh into the crowd, which the onlookers eagerly grabbed and devoured.

After the ceremony was complete, Starfire wiped some vermillion blood from her mouth, smiled and burped happily, then turned to her companions. "So, did you enjoy the ceremony?" Raven said yes but shivered slightly. Terra simply winced and nodded. Beast Boy, curled into a fetal position, eyes out of focused, gave a feeble meeping noise and rocked back and forth.


	19. Chapter 19

Starfire sweatdropped and expirementally poked Beast Boy. He rocked a little more and said "Tom Thunder! Did I choose the name? No, it chose me..."

Starfire frowned. "I take it that rites have had a somewhat...unfortunate effect on Beast Boy's concious mind." Raven and Terra nodded. Starfire looked at Raven pleadingly.

"Will you please repair his damaged brain?" Starfire asked her psychic friend.

Raven raised her eyebrow and shrugged as if to say that there was little brain to repair and it was pretty damaged to begin with, but she would do her best. Moments later she was squeezed in an intense hug that caused her head to inflate, her eyes to bulge, and her mouth to emit a squeeking sound like a chew toy.

"Oh thank you friend Raven, I shall not soon forget this."

"Just please let me go," she croaked as she felt the Tamaranian death-grip cutting off her blood flow. Raven closed her eyes and put her hands to Beast Boys head. She went in and found a vast emptyness.

"Well, somehow this isn't so supris-" a neon sign flashed.

"Love Hina is stupid..."Raven read aloud. Another one flickered up. "The cheat code for Warioland is to pause and then press select sixteen times. When that happens, you can use the arrow keys to adjust number of lives, coins, or size by moving the flashing indicator to the appropriate number and pressing up, or moving it to the small screen image of Wario and pressing up in the last case." Soon other ones began appearing, and they started flying around. She found herself violently ejected from Beast Boy's cranium by a geyser of 14 years worth of accumulated nerdlore.

"Inuyasha should quit being indecisive and go for the girl who's alive and doesn't eat souls...Mike Nelson has a generally better stage persona but Joel still has his moments and great improv...Scifi...channel's…movies…except for Wrath of the Dragon God, which was better than the ori-" Raven muttered, and passed out.

Raven came to in a few minutes with a mild headache and an inexplicable compulsion to play Dungeons and Dragons. "Did I do it?" she asked .

"No, I am afraid friend Beast Boy is still...indisposed. Terra has attempted to revive him by burping loudly and making crude jokes and pointing at things vaguely resembling reproductive organs, but it is to no avail. She is now doing strange things to him."

Raven gave an inquiring stare. Starfire simply pointed to show Terra stretching out his limp arms and legs into various comical positions, only to watch them slowly pull back to protectively clench around him. Raven gave a sigh.

"So, what now?" she asked.

"Well, there will be a quarter-arn interlude before the feast begins. Hopefully we can revive him before then."

"I'm going to go try some stuff," Terra said ambigiously and with a furtive, almost guilty glance around before clutching the gibbering heap and taking him under the bleachers. In less than a minute there was a suprised yell and Terra returned with Beast Boy, upright and sane once more. "Friend Terra! You have concieved something amusing to rouse beast boy from his catonic state!" Starfire said happily. "What happened?" Beast Boy asked in a confused tone. "Oh, nothing. I made jokes and you got back to normal. Fart, booger, underwear. Nothing innapropriate happened. ," Terra said, with a halo over her head, then moved to adjust it as it started to slide and gave it a light tap when it flickered and gave off sparks.

A resounding gong rang out. "THE FEAST HAS BEGUN!" Starfire said urgently and grabbed all three of her companions and flew.

As they took seats at the long table, they saw tired, dusty, and slightly scarred Robin and Cyborg stumble into their seats, to fatigued to be upset or angry. "Robin and Cyborg, you are injured! What has happened?"

"We really don't want to talk about it," they both said simultaneously. As the dishes were passed out both Cyborg and Terra lept for the food only to be smacked backwards and out of their seats by a pair of powerful and sudden backhands from Starfire.

"What gives?" Cyborg asked, "last time we came here everybody just leapt up on the table and ate."

"That was a marriage feast, a social and political event. Even the most liberal of Tamaranians wait for the clergy to bless the meal before eating on the most sacred of holidays."

"Sheesh, sorry for not being telepathic like Raven," Terra said rubbing her sore head.

As Beast Boy was nervously eyeing his plate and prodding it to see if anything moved, Starfire turned to him. "I have requested that the chefs prepare a special meal for you devoid of animal flesh."

"Oh, thank you," Beast Boy said, smiley and wondering whether he should be happy or nervous given the general quality of Tamaranian cuisine he had experienced.

Miliseconds after the prayer was recited, the attendants literally flew from their chairs and began ravenously feeding in the orgy of devouring that was Tamaranian table manners. When the dust had cleared, Beast Boy was missing both arms and a leg but still bending over to lick what was left of the surprisingly appealing dish, Robin escaped the feeding frenzy with a few mouthfuls and only a couple of scratches and bite marks the worse, Cyborg was cracked in a few places and in need of a new paint job but otherwise intact. It took them a while to notice Terra, their attention initially drawn by the sound of a chair breaking into splinters from the weight of a massive burden.

"Terra?!" they all turned and exclaimed with suprise. The blond titan was laying on her back, feebly trying to clutch a gargantuan stomach that was bloated about two or three feet above the table line even with her lying prone. She had a look of utter satisfaction and bliss on her face. She patted her massively stuffed globe of a belly and let loose a tremendous belch so loud it interupted the thought train of H.I.V.E. academy student Gizmo back on earth(1), and elecitated an intense chorus of laughter from Beast Boy. She turned beet red when she became aware of herself and that her companions were staring at her. After he stopped laughing, for a moment he stared at her, eyes transfixed and drooling a little. He broke the awkward silence by saying congradulatorily

"Terra, those Taco-bell commercials have nothing over you!" and extended an appreciative high-five. She returned it, although she didn't quite get the joke. Raven, chewing thoughtfully on one of the unnamed entrees she had levitated out of the flurry, pondered on why the Tamaranians bothered to include chairs if they went airborne as soon as the meal began.

Terra gave a little moan. "Ugggh, I think I'll never eat again. I'm so full, I feel like pu-Hey are you gonna finish that?" she said eyes bulging as she noticed one of Raven's items hovering above her.

Raven paused briefly to give Terra a sub-zero contemptuous look and said "take it".

Terra reached out with one tired arm and whimpered. Raven rolled her eyes and grudgingly levitated the foodstuff directly into her mouth. As Terra lay patting her enormous stomach, it began to jiggle violently and emit a muffled sound. Terra got a weird look on her face, coughed a little, then reached into her mouth and pulled out three now slimey and odd smelling Tamaranian teenagers. She blushed, sweatdropped, muttered a few hasty apologies, and deposited them back in their seats.

With this reduction in her burden, she rose up and transplanted herself to pair of larger, sturdier chairs in futile hope of discovering some left-overs. After licking at a few stray food molecules for a while Terra noticed that a fair number of the Tamaranian boys(1) (and a few of the girls) at the table where eying her with obvious interest, eyes bulging and either salivating or releasing small clouds of little red hearts. She spent a little time winking, licking her lips, and engaging in other forms of body-language flirtation until Beast Boy took notice, transformed into a [i]Pachycephalosaurus[/i] and let loose a high resounding bellow that noticably discouraged the would-be suitors. Terra blushed and tried to look innocent.

Robin watched Beast Boy's fierce defense and chuckled a little. "Terra certainly seems to be attracting a lot of attention," he said.

"Indeed," Starfire said, smiling with bemusement.(2) "You know, most Tameranians seek a voracious appetite and eating capacity in a female," Starfire remarked in an off-hand tone. "Biopsychologists believe it stems from the survival instincts of our ancestors. We used to be a lot like earth insects. Larger of course, and more intelligent."

Robin nodded, his mind slightly drifting. "So Starfire, what do Tamaranians seek in males?" he asked.

"Oh, many things. Somebody sweet, tender, a man with good taste." she began. Starfire leaned closer "Somebody with lots of protein and carbohydrates, but not to much fat, and of course flavor is important," she went on, continuing in the same half-hypothetical tone of voice. Robin's eyes bulged and he begin to ripple with apprehension and inch away. She turned to look directly at him, sizing him up like a restaurant menu. She winked at him, and then licked her lips with a sinister predatory grin. As he began to rise from his seat, she grabbed him by the arm, pulled him close, opened her jaws wide and...

____________________________

(1)Thereby inadvertently saving said planet from total destruction

(2)including one of the ones she had eaten

(3)Contrary to what many people thought, she did not have a lesbian crush on Terra.

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	20. Chapter 20

...gave him a playful kiss on the cheek. Robin's body, moments before tense with panic and confusion, melted into a little pool of relief. "I was 'just kidding' as you would say. I did not mean to harm your feelings, but the opportunity was simply too great to resist," she explained to him apologetically as he wiped a thick layer of sweat from his brow.

"Tamaranian females [i]rarely[/i] eat their mates after copulating anymore."

Eventually, with the assistance of gorilla-form Beast Boy, Cyborg, and a muscular Tamaranian royal guard, the incredibly bloated Terra managed to make her way over to the private sleeping quarters that had been reserved for them.

"Not that I'm complaining, but, why are we staying here overnight?" Cyborg asked, as he brushed his teeth.

"The Cthgha-Niggurothian festival lasts for more than one day. I assumed you have some similar celebration on earth."

They all tucked in to bed, wondering what strange joys, unearthly rites, and blaspheming horrors the next day would bring.

Robin was lightly sprawled upon the soft blue bedding. His legs where pulled up close to him, his back arched defensively, and his arms inclined slightly as if about to strike some dreamed opponent. He looked so peaceful; Starfire barely had the heart to wake him. Carefully, she gently prodded him with one hand and softly spoke his name. "Robin?" He shifted slightly but did not arise. "Robin?" she called, a little louder and gently shook his shoulder.

His entire body went rigid as he tensed into combat mode. He withdrew bow stuff and swung it in a crippling blow. Starfire, trained by time and practice(1), dodged seconds before he opened his eyes and came to conscious thought.

"Wha...Starfire are you alright?" he said, the confusion and daze of sleep still weighing heavily upon his brain.

"Yes Robin, I am fine. Cthugha's light is already rising in the sky, and it is time for you to arise from your sleeping quarters." Robin slowly sat up, yawned, and embarked on a short routine of morning exercise to purge the last mists of dream and inactivity from his mind. He turned on the faucet at the sink and splashed his face in the cool crisp water. Starfire stared and blushed, warping her face to try and stem some flood of laughter. "What's so funny?" Robin asked. "Um, friend Robin, are you aware that you have just washed your face in a urinal?" she asked. Robin sweatdropped and turned a lovely shade of crimson, diminishing into a little puddle and slinking under the bed(2).

______________________________________________

(1)Robin routinely passed out while working, and that combined with night terrors and high stress made him a somewhat violent waker.

(2)He was wondering if that was the urinal, what was the thing he had relieved himself in last night?

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As Starfire exited the room, Robin removed his utility belt, stripped down, and then got on a fresh pair of identical clothes. He often wondered why he bothered to change clothes every day, even though he, being a teenage male, frequently failed to notice any trace of dirt or grime upon them. Still old habits die hard, and he concluded that there was probably some arcane purpose for it, like the seemingly futile task of making one's bed.

When the team was assembled, Starfire gave what appeared to be a loud whistle, but the frequency was either too high or too low for human hearing. Within minutes a massive black beast resembling a enormous manta ray swooped down and Starfire hopped upon one of the seat-like bone spurs that lined its spinal chord and indicated to the Titans to do the same. "So, which part of the festival is next? Will there be another feast?" Cyborg inquired cheerfully and hopefully. "No, today is the Tamaranian Fertility ceremony." she said.

As they soared, Starfire began to question whether it would be wise to take her friends to witness the fertility ceremony. For starters, there was the simply difficulties involved. She had to use up a lot of favors and pull a few strings in the Tamaranian clergy and political court just to allow any non-Tamaranians to participate in the festival much less non-worshippers. There was however the more important issue of whether it would be worth it to her friends. With Beast Boy's reaction to the opening sacrifice, perhaps the elaborate reproductive rites would have an unfortunate effect on more than one of her earthly companions. The entire process was also, while common on Tamaran, a highly taboo subject on earth even for discussion, much less to actually witness. She was interrupted in these considerations by the creature coming in for a slightly bumpy landing, right outside the temple of fertility.

As Robin began to head towards the temple doors, Starfire turned to him.

"Friend Robin, tell me, do you wish to join in the celebratory rituals?"

Starfire cut him off before he could answer. "How strongly do you desire to fully participate in this holiday?" Robin gave a quizzical look. "Starfire, is there something wrong? Do you want me to stay out?"

Starfire fumbled, searching for the right words "Well, it's not so much that, as..."

She then bent over and began whispering in Robin's ear. He went through varying degrees of shock, intense interest, obvious desire, horror, and disgust. "I think I see what you mean," Robin said, pouring sweat and turning a lovely shade of vermillion. "Perhaps you would like to tour the Royal Gardens of Tamaran instead? I shall arrange an escort for you." She said, gently but firmly shoving all the Titans off-screen. "I shall return in less than an hour," she called waving to them, before flying in, temple gates slamming shut behind her.

An armored figure led the gang through an ornate metal archway to a massive Terrarium filled with all sorts of shrubs, trees, vines, grasses, and other flora of less clear taxonomy. Cyborg seemed absorbed in some downloaded game playing out on his robotic eye. Raven had her usual expression of unimpressed blandness.

"Wow...plants."

Terra asked if any of them were edible. The escort mechanically rattled off various names and factoids. Beast Boy seemed to have died and gone to Arborea.

"Holy crap! This tree has infrared chlorophyll! I mean, it's not really chlorophyll if it isn't green, but it's close enough. The kind of light conditions this must..." he seemed entirely unfazed by the fact that nobody was paying attention to him, and continued excitedly announcing his revelations to the general area in a voice clearly audible on other solar systems. As the guard was making a reminder about not straying from the path, a particular fern caught his interest, and the others, already having mentally filtered out the sound of his voice, continued walking on without him.

As Beast Boy bent over to examine the plant, he thought he heard a voice calling. [i]"Beeeast Boy..."[/i]. He turned and looked around.

"Who is that? Terra? Raven? Cyborg?" he began to tremble as he realized that he was currently quite alone. He began to move away, but the voice called again, louder, and as he covered his ears to no effect he realized that it was a call from within his own head. [i][b]"BEAST BOY! Cooome to me..."[/b][/i] Beast Boy felt the familiar peace of mental servitude grip his mind, his arms extended forward and he let his jaw slack and drool. He then slowly began to shamble toward the source.

Terra heard her stomach growl and rubbed her empty belly.

"Hey, Beast Boy, could you get me a-" she then turned her head the other way, looked behind her, and began frantically calling and searching. The others soon joined in, along with the guard, combing the nearby shrubbery and straining their ears to catch some string of herbological blithering. They heard a terrified shriek echo through the valley.

"Beast Boy!" Terra cried.

"No, that's just a tropical shrieking mushroom," the escort said prompting a sigh of relief. Another, more high-pitched and cracking scream rang out.

"Now [i]that[/i] is your companion."


	21. Chapter 21

After several minutes, the transfixed Beast Boy found himself in a small clearing in front of a massive, bulbous, pod-bearing plant. The voice called again. [i]"Come closer...good, now a little to the left...no, further towards the kill zone...okay, stand there and go limp."[/i] As he unthinkingly obeyed, the massive vegetation extended a powerful clump of massive vines, pulled him up to the openings at its base, and engulfed him, prompting a scream just as it released its mental control before swallowing the green adolescent. As he was sealed away in its internal sac, paralytic toxins and roots working their way into him, some pods on the outside began to grow and take on his shape...

As they followed the source of the sound, the met with a familiar green face. "I found him!" Terra shouted.

"I found him!" Cyborg signaled.

"I found him!" Raven remarked.

"Wait a second," they all said, and turned one by one. Robin hastily counted and recounted, rubbed his eyes, and checked his blood alcohol content, but discovered that the result was the same.

"Three Beast Boy's?" Cyborg stammered.

"And I thought one of them was a pain," Raven quipped.

Terra didn't say anything because she was currently busy fantasizing about a new world of possibilities open to her devious little mind.

"There has to be some explanation for this," Robin said almost indignantly.

The guard stared at the massive plant nearby and the empty pod cases. "Oh dear, it seems your companion has succumb to the Trunkula plant."

"Holy crap! It's like invasion of the body snatchers, except you don't even have to go to sleep!" the Beast Boys exclaimed in chorus.

"Hey, stop copying me!"

"No, you stop copying me!"

"Stop copying me!"

"Could you all please shut up while we sort this out?" Raven said. The Beast Boys were silent for a few seconds and then resumed their flow of inane chatter.

"How can we tell them apart?" Robin asked.

"Duh, me, cuz I'm the real one!" one of the Beast Boys said.

"No, I'm the fake Beast Boy...no, I mean real Beast Boy, dammit, real!"

"I'm sparticus, er, Beast Boy" the third one called. Robin, Cyborg, and Raven all gave a collective sigh.

"All of you, hold still," Raven said in an authoritative tone. She then muttered a chant, and red bolts shot at each of the green doppelgangers, causing them to yelp with pain. They were now each branded on the forehead with scars that resembled the letters A, B, and Y.

"Shouldn't I be 'C' instead of 'Y'?" Beast Boy Y asked.

"It's gamma. This incantation uses the Greek alphabet," Raven said dismissively. "Now, what will only the real Beast Boy know?"

They all got in a group huddle and talked. After much deliberation, Cyborg turned and addressed the green group. "What is the typographical error in the Dungeons and Dragons third edition rule's text for Tyrranosaurus?"

The Beast Boys all answered at once, "The swallow whole attack says the creature must cut its way free to escape from the [i]Behir's[/i] stomach as a result of poorly edited copy-paste techniques."

"Damn, this is gonna be harder than I thought. Okay, what is your confirmation name?"

The Beast Boys huddled together and after much debate, said, "we're going to guess that it's a trick question and we don't have a confirmation name."

"Also correct. Alright, time for the tie breaker."

Cyborg turned to Raven and whispered something. With a quizzical look, she muttered a few magic words and produced a small box turtle. She held it close to each one.

"What is this?" she asked.

"A turtle," alpha said.

"A box turtle," beta elaborated.

"Cute!" Gamma squealed.

"Alright," Cyborg said, "I know which one it is."

Cyborg gave a smug grin. "They're all fake. Beast Boy's had a crippling phobia of box turtles for years." As he said this, the three Beast Boys pointed at him and let loose an angry, inhuman hissing shriek.

Starfire was heading toward the garden to pick up her friends, wiping off various viscous substances from the fertility rights as she went. A series of piercing screams caused her to soar in with an intensified vigor, wondering if there was any part of her planet that [i]didn't[/i] put her friends in mortal peril. As she soared distractedly through, she caught a familiar polleny aroma, and by the time she recognized it she had landed face-first in a field of that native flower to which she was madly allergic. As she began to swell and bloat she let loose a string filled with every Tamaranian curse-word she could find.

As the Titans prepared to fight, they saw the plant and the Beast Boys glare at them and emit a low hum. Within seconds they were sprawled across the ground, clutching their heads and moaning from the psychic assault. Raven seemed to be affected the most, crying in psychosomatic agony as a vast wave of awareness was crushing her own mind.

Cyborg, the only one unaffected, aimed his sonic cannon and fired upon the creatures. They were knocked back a few feet, but got up unhurt. "Wha...how...nothing is immune to sonic damage! That's...no!" The creatures merely hissed and leapt at him. "Guess I'll have to do this the old-fashioned way," he said cracking his knuckles.

The alpha attacker was met with a hard blow to the face. Instead of the normal spine-cracking crunch that would accompany this, there was merely a sickly twisting, a popping sound, the rupture and discharge of sticky, sap-like fluid. He took the next one and tried to break its back over his leg, but it merely bent, wrinkled, and twisted, internal fluid sacks popping but with no evidence of hard structures. As grabbed and tossed the third one like a rag doll, he noticed the wounds of the first two began to change in the sun, the strange sap bubbling and healing over and the creatures rising anew to attack him.

Starfire was now a good 30ft in diameter and steadily expanding as she clumsily drifted herself towards the site. She wasn't exactly sure how she could possibly help her friends as a living blimp with less effective weight than a paper clip, but whatever it was she would do her best.

******

Cyborg continued tossing and blasting away at his vegetative adversaries, but they simply kept coming back. On the rare times he managed to inflict actual harm, they just soaked up the light for a few seconds and were good as new. They kept on coming back, relentlessly, and he was getting tired. He then blinked his eyes as what appeared to be an enormous orange balloon came towards him. "Starfire?" he called incredulously.

"Hello friend Cyborg!" she called, waving a tiny hand that was dwarfed by her completely massive boyant body.

"Starfire, help!" Cyborg cried. She tried to fire a starbolt, but she was too light to aim properly. As the force sent her into a sideways spin and set her adrift again, Cyborg saw one of the pod Beast Boys fleeing from her shadow and got an idea.

"Starfire, try to stay above them!"

A little confused, she simply gave a very small nod and said "I shall do my best." She awkwardly floated over so that she blocked out the sun for a good-sized area with her enormous form. As the shade covered them, the pod Beast Boys became slow and weak. Cyborg took advantage of that weakness and totally dismembered one, ripped another to shreds, and repeatedly impaled the third. He then dragged the nearly unconscious titans out of the monstrous plant's reach before jamming his fist into it and ripping out the frail form of the real Beast Boy.

Terra and Robin groaned slightly as the psychic paralysis wore off. Raven took a little longer to recover, and when she did she seemed a little out of it. She looked around and blinked stupidly and said "huh? What happened?" with a dull-eyed, groggy voice.

"You got attacked by a psychic plant and some Beast Boy pods, which I then tore apart with Starfire's help."

Raven, who had been playing with her cape, turned and looked it him. "Huh? I wasn't paying attention," she said. Cyborg began to repeat the explanation, but found she was just staring at him with unsettling interest.

"Shiny..."

"Uhh, Raven, are you feeling okay?" Robin asked.

She turned to him, shouted the word "PENIS!" and then fell over laughing.

"I'll take that as a no," he said. There was a noise like the stretching of an over-inflated balloon.

"Um, friends," Starfire said unobtrusively while the others took a look at Raven. Beast Boy stumbled a little and whimpered.

"Sooo tired..." muttered as he collapsed against Raven. He was rudely awakened by the distinct sensation of her vigorously gnawing on his head. He futilely tried to pull away, and Raven clung tighter, defensively whining

"MY pudding!".

Terra was about to help wrench away Beast Boy when something tight and warm bumped up against her. She then gaped to see Starfire, so swollen and bloated that she was nearly touching the ground.

"Um, guys, I think we should focus first on getting her back to normal before she explodes maybe?"

Robin whipped out a cryo-pack and gently released its contents, careful not to deflate her too quickly and cause tissue damage. When he returned his attentions he noticed Raven had a large bulge in her cheeks and a green arm hanging limply out of her mouth. "Raven, is that Beast Boy in your mouth?" Robin asked.

"Mrph-hglohaph" she said, shaking her head vigorously and looking around nervously.

"Raven, don't lie to me," he said in a parental tone.

"Mgphlf!" she said defiantly.

"Raven, spit him out, you don't know where he's been," he said commandingly. She gave Robin a leer and then spewed forth the verdant shape-shifter.

"Whooa. Who..." he mumbled, heavily disoriented and weak from the pod-cloning process, before slumping over and passing out again. A small humming sound emitted from a blue crystal that floated by them.

"Come friends, we must make the planetary leap now. You may experience uncomfortable sensations, akin to being gang-raped by prehistoric sea creatures, in the areas between the soles of your feet and your scalp, inclusive."

As Starfire said this, a translucent purple goo began to rise out of the ground and engulf them.

"Mmm, jello..." Raven said, reaching out her hand before Starfire slapped it away.

"NO! Do [b]not[/b] eat the transport plasmoid!" After that they were encapsulated, and went firing through space to land on a nearby planet. A little shaken but unharmed. they emerged to find themselves in a dark, cold, sharpness.

"Starfire, how did we get here...and why?"


	22. Chapter 22

Starfire raised her hand and held a small starbolt for light, revealing the desert-like landscape before them, with occasionally hardy plants, crystalline growths, sulphurous rivers, and jets of hot boiling caustic substances. "This is Torlain, the planet closest to the sun in our solar system. This is where the latter portion of the celebration takes place."

"Where are all the other people?" Beast Boy asked.

"There," she said pointing slightly to the left of him at a massive throng of Tamaranians with objects resembling tents and videocameras set up.

"I don't know how I missed that," he said, scratching his head.

"So, what happens now?" Robin prompted.

"Is the sun gonna explode?" Beast Boy asked

"Is there going to be another feast" Cyborg asked hopefully.

"Will we get to see the fertility ri-er, will there be another feast?" Terra said.

Starfire simply pointed up. They all turned upwards and saw a single white light shoot into the sky silently, then in a burst of sound broke into a red, green, and blue one. These swirled around each other, humming and undulating with a strange ethereal music wholly unlike that of any earthly fireworks. As they soared in and met, they grew brighter, merged, and burst again into a whole plethora of colored lights in the sky, joining and dividing, growing and shrinking, humming, chirping, bellowing and wailing in an ever-changing myriad of light and sound. "Pretty..." Raven said aloud, echoing the thoughts of her awe-struck companions.

Starfire looked up and smiled. The aerial display was one of those timeless rituals that she never truly got tired of. She thought back to the time back on earth when she and Robin watched the "fireworks". She had inwardly laughed at such a primitive display of pyrotechnics, the kind she had built as a seven year old child when she got bored. She sometimes feigned ignorance of "earth concepts", especially around Robin. She long ago discovered that being frightened the toaster would attack was a good excuse to cling to him and being unfamiliar with earthling customs was a convenient excuse for peeking at him while he was taking a shower. Other times being strange to earthly ways was an easy ticket out of any awkward situation. Amusing really to think that one could be naive enough to believe an intelligent being would have no concept of ownership as it applied to other people's dessert. It was one of the few forms of dishonesty she allowed herself to get away with.

Starfire looked at Robin, his eye-mask sparkling with childlike wonder. Robin was rarely amazed or fascinated by things, only surprised, weirded out, or concerned. She loved that look, all the worry and tense rigidity and obsessions melted away leaving blissful awe. If only he could look like that more. As he stared upwards, she casually yawned and stretched out her arm behind him, then wrapped it around is torso bringing him into a gentle embrace. He blushed, startled slightly, and then returned the gesture. Terra embraced Beast Boy from the front, reaching around and giving him a little squeeze, but to her dissappointment he didn't seem to notice. "Uaaahhh..." he said as he gazed up at the sky, drooling vacantly. She gently rubbed her hands against his soft, flat stomach, the small bumps in his spine, his quasi-corporeal tentacle-

"BWA?!" She said, turning to see Raven wrapping her appendages, both supernatural and mundane, around Beast Boy.

"Kitty," she said, clinging to him happily.

"MINE!" Terra yelled angrily, spouting fire from her nostrils.

"MINE!" Raven growled angrily, baring her fangs and glaring with all four eyes. Beast Boy simply stared and drooled as he was pulled into a thin green rope in this tug of war.

In the sky there hung a massive shape of flames, its three massive nova-like clusters complex knotting tendrils of flame. Although orange and yellow where dominant, the thing gave off light in every degree of the spectrum, from infrared to the utmost ultraviolet.

In its flames where images. Its coloring was all the sunsets and sunrises of the eons, the pattern of its flickering showed the first primal ancestors of the Tamaranians breaking of from their insectoid kin, losing wings in favor of less clear means of flight, changing and growing hands to manipulate objects and a soft outer padding for their new shape to keep their exoskeleton from being cracked by the sharp rocks abundant and the predatory T'leekee birds, taking in the suns rays and forging them into a weapon, and advancing from simplistic groups of hunters into a complex society.

The Tamaranians all cheered with joy and reverence for their deity, and then bowed down and presented it with the traditional gifts of grain, sweets, fermented beverages, and fuel, which were spirited into the air and absorbed by the fiery mass. As it drifted over by Starfire, Raven inquisitively probed out a mild psychic investigation, not exactly trying to read its mind for fear of the ensuing backlash but just giving it a general telepathic feeling out. She was astounded to discover the nature of this creatures thoughts. This creature was intelligent by human standards, but within a moderate genius range and nowhere near the raw calculating intellect of a true god, a veritable simpleton by divine standards. Its supernatural aura also seemed weak for such a powerful being. It seemed to come mostly from known spells, of which it had a somewhat limited array. It still had wisdom and strength of spirit elevated far beyond mortal stature, but she wondered if it even was a true god at all, or just an enormous, powerful-OOOH! That stuff they're giving it looks like pudding! I want some pudding!

"Gimme pudding!" Raven demanded angrily. Starfire took her companion by the hand. "Come friend Raven, I think we need to heal your mind," slowly leading her off in the direction of some priestly looking figures.

After a brief closing ceremony, the great Cthga-Niggurothian festival came to an end. The priestesses used some specialized herbs and healing spells to restore Raven, and they all gathered up their things to leave.

As they were starting up the ship, Cyborg noticed Starfire was chewing on something, almost like a green hand. He gasped and dived at her, knocking the grim snack out of her mouth.

"STARFIRE STOP!" She blinked and started to respond.

"Nooo! Beast Boy! My best bud. I never appreciated you enough. I didn't get the chance! I should have respected you more instead of just putting you down like everybody else, I shouldn't have mocked you for your beliefs. Why god? WHYYY?! If only you could somehow be alive, I'd never so much as touch a stea-"

"Hey, Cyborg, are you alright?" asked a familiar voice.

"Oh man, I can almost hear him now. I'm not alright, I've just lost my best friend. Oh Beast Boy, if only you could have more than a scant 14 years to taste life,"

"Dude, what are you talking about?" Cyborg turned around and his eyes bulged.

"Oh Beast Boy, my main man, you're alive again! It's a miracle!" he yelled, and wrapped several hundred pounds of powerful machinery and toned muscle around him in a spine-crushing embrace.

"Dude...I never was dead...and this is reeeally creeping me out! I'm glad you appreciate me, but, oh yeah, and I can't breath and my ribs are cracking," he said, face contorted by a mixture of humiliation, surprise, fear, asphixiation, and intense pain. Cyborg instantly released him and stared at the severed green hand with bite marks, Starfire's stomach, and Beast Boy.

"But...you, and, he, there the...SHE ATE YOU!"

"Yeah, I remember that, both times."

"No, I mean again! The...that's your hand!"

Beast Boy stared and compared the severed portion to its intact counterpart.

"Huh, that does look like my hand. Starfire, do you know what's going on?" Starfire pulled out a couple of what appeared to be dead Beast Boys, their bones brown and dislocated, with sticky greenish fluid on their wounds. He gaped in horror and confusion. "The hell?!"

Cyborg briefly analyzed them and then got a look of dawning comprehension. "Ooooh, it's the pod BBs."

Beast Boy gave a quizzical look. "Remember when that plant hypnotized you and swallowed you, then made duplicates of you a la 'Invasion of the Body Snatchers'?"

"No,"

"Well, it did. Anyway, what were you doing with them Star?"

"Eating," she said. "The fruit of the Trunkula plant is very juicy and nourishing. Besides, it's the next best thing to eating Beast Boy."

Beast Boy surged with adrenaline, his face split by resentful anger and primal terror.

"A playful jest only friend," Starfire said quickly and apologetically, calming him down.

Starfire offered Beast Boy the carbon copy of his hand. "Would you care for a taste? It is after all entirely vegetable in nature."

Beast Boy blinked. "Um, well, I guess," he said, curiously crunching on a finger.

"Hmm. Hey this is good, tastes sort of like sugar snap peas, eggplant, and tofu, only a lot richer and gamier." He then noticed Cyborg's expression of revulsion.

"Uggh, that's like, cannibalism AND tofu mixed together." He went through yet another dramatic chromatic shift, turning a pale green, and quickly rushed to the bathroom to be violently ill.

Robin did a quick roll call and checkup before they left*(1) They had each taken something with them. Starfire got the BB pods, Terra had a few Tamaranian delicacies, Cyborg had some of the Tamaranian fireworks tech, Robin had gotten a few traditional Tamaranian weapons to add to his utility belt, Beast Boy had some transplantable Tamaranian vegetation, and Raven had picked up some divine spells from the priestesses.

_________________________

(1)He had done this when embarking on interstellar journeys ever since they accidently left Raven on Alpha Centuri. That mishap had led to her exacting her wrath in a "mind wedgie".

________________________

"Alright, now, Cyborg did you refuel the ship and get a good charge?"

"Both at full power."

"Terra, did you make sure to eat?"

"BEEEEOOOORP!"

"I'll take that as a yes. Beast Boy, did you go to the bathroom?"

This elicited a snicker from Cyborg.

"Yes dad."

"Alright, prepare for take-off!"

With that, they launched off, and began the long journey home.

"Are we there yet?"

THE END


End file.
